


I said I'd love you for the rest of your life (but I was always gonna love you for the rest of mine)

by TheTruthAboutLove



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, One Shot Collection, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-05-20 07:50:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19372399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTruthAboutLove/pseuds/TheTruthAboutLove
Summary: One-shots collection (some two-shots probably). These are mostly written for tumblr prompts, some are taken from the Blackhill week prompts. You'll find each prompt in the notes before every chapter, so you can choose which to read.





	1. lead me back home from this place (there's only me and my disgrace)

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmates AU: first sentence your soulmate says is written on your skin (the color can vary: silver/grey usually, white if your soulmate is dead, black if you're the one who kills them).

Soulmate sentences were grey, almost silver, as if they could shine under the proper light, mystical and magical as they were.

Maria used to hide the words written across her seventh left rib any way she could, treating them like a secret that nobody else should ever know. They were silver and shiny, and written in such a small size that she had to be a teenager before she could start to make out the words.

Her father's words were different. She had seen them once, when he was working on the kitchen sink, trying to fix a dripping tube with his shirt off.

They didn't shine anymore, they lost the lively color soulmate tattoos were known for, they were faded and worn out. White. Almost gone.

“They turned white when she died,” he told her, not looking at her.

Maria averted her eyes, not proud of having been caught staring.

“They were red when I was a newborn, my mother said. It was because your mom wasn't born, yet, so they were unmatched.”

“Was mine-”

“Yeah, it was red all right. Turned silver when you were about two years old.”

Maria stalled for a moment.

“Are there other possible colors?”

Her father almost laughed. “No, no. There's rumors, going around, but if you ask me it's all bullshit.”

“What kinds of rumors?”

He sighed, drying his hands on the worn out pants he was wearing and standing up.

“Well, you see,” he almost shrugged. “Some people say, the words are a different color if...”

Maria watched closely as he shrugged and looked around for a moment, almost pondering if he should be talking about such things with his sixteen years old daughter.

“I never saw anyone with that color, alright?” He said, as if the fact that it was probably just some unfounded rumors would make it better. “But someone says the words can be black, if you're the one who's going to kill your own soulmate. Or if they're going to kill you.”

Maria thought about that a lot. But no matter how much she dwelled on her father's words, they would just not make sense to her. Who could ever kill their own soulmate?

  
  


_Natalia Romanova was born in Russia when soulmates tattoos where considered sacred. They could not be doubted. Once you met your soulmate, you married them and spent your life with them. There simply was no other path._

_Her mother weeped over her small form when she saw her. When the nurse told her in hushed and frightened words there would be policemen coming soon, her parents cradled Natalia into their arms and fled the hospital._

_She was the prettiest baby born all year. Or rather – she would have been, had her body not been covered in black words all over._

_They counted at least thirteen sentences before tears made it impossible to keep looking. Thirteen black soulmate marks. Thirteen soulmates that weren't going to last. And one, one single silver line on her lower back for the soulmate that would._

_The men who found them when she was four were not policemen. One of them stared at Natalia and told them that a woman capable of killing thirteen soulmates could be capable of killing anyone in the world. A merciless girl like that, could become the best assassin they'd ever had._

_The problem was Natalia was all but merciless; so they shaped her that way._

  
  


It was in the form of a picture, many years later, that her father's words came back to haunt her for the first time since her adult life started.

She had dismissed that notion as nothing more than a legend, but how could she be sure there was truly nothing more? After all, the proof that it was possible was right there in her hand.

“It's not possible. Is it, sir?”

“I don't know, Coulson. This is the only clear picture of her we have.”

“But how can a single person have this many-”

“They're all black,” Barton interrupted them. “Why are they black?”

“It's not unheard of for a person to have more than a soulmate, I've heard of people having two, someone even as much as three, but this-” May shook her head and sighed.

“Why are the words _black_?” Barton asked again.

“It explains the nickname. One of the deadliest spiders in the world. She has at least a dozen soulmates, and she's going to kill them all,” Maria said pragmatically.

Silence fell upon them as she spoke and nobody knew what to say for a long while.

It was Fury who broke the silence.

“Well, since she knows all the faces of all our agents, I guess it's time to send in our secret weapon, Agent Hill.”

Maria felt her heart flutter, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “Yes, sir.”

  
  


Natalia had been running from S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents for weeks, dodging every attempt to either kill her or capture her, but now that the Red Room was gone once and for all, she didn't know how to protect herself anymore.

She had a list of every Agent S.H.I.E.L.D. could send after her, pictures, names, she had it all. But it would eventually be old info, there would be new agents, new names she didn't know, new faces she couldn't recognize in time.

She had a very specific skill set. For a long time, she hadn't cared whom she used it for. Or on. She got under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar and she knew there was no way out of it. She would just have to hang on, trying to survive for as long as she could.

But things changed. She wanted to atone, to redeem herself for all the bad she did under the Red Room's influence, she wanted to make amends. But it wasn't easy. She started by gaining intel on weapon trafficking, but she had no idea on how to stop the net she uncovered by herself. She didn't have the means, she barely had the will.

It was in a bar in Ukraine, the first time she heard the words.

She learned to cover up all the writings on her body with clothes and a lot of make up, never leaving the words exposed. There was only one picture of her from her Red Room days where her tattoos were unmasked, and she knew a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent named Barton got his hands on it. But the words were unreadable. So it couldn't simply be faked. But it couldn't be a coincidence either.

“ **Hi, I'm John. Can I buy you a drink**?”

The man asking was taller than her, dark hair and blue eyes, a neat beard framing his face, he was wearing a grey suit, a white shirt, and a black tie and shoes.

He was handsome. He was, sadly, also the first person to ask Natalia if he could buy her a drink in Ukrainian with that odd American sentence structure, introducing himself as John first, so Natalia would regrettably have to choke him with his own tie.

She smiled at him, raising her glass. Emptying in one big gulp, she smashed it against the counter with no warning and tried to use the sharp edge to cut the poor man's throat. He jumped back as commotion spread around them and a bar fight erupted right before their eyes.

Natalia tried to corner him against the counter, but he was smart enough not to get cornered. He was obviously trained, she noticed. She also noticed the dashing smile on his lips was gone.

She went for a high kick, then a punch. He dodged both and raised his hands into a defense stance, so Natalia tried to stab one of his hands with the glass she still had. He dodged it, causing it to hit the table on their side, getting stuck in the wood.

Using the distraction, as he stared at the glass, she snuck off to the back room. He was stupid enough to follow her, she had no choice but to fight him.

“We just want to talk,” he tried to stop her ferocious attack, to no avail. “S.H.I.E.L.D. does not want to do you any harm.”

The lies spilling through his teeth did nothing to quell Natalia's assault. But he barely took a couple of punches and a kick. He was good, Natalia thought, better than any other agents or mercenaries she ever had to fight against. This was one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top Agents, without a doubt. Then why the hell did she have no idea he even existed?

“If you just let me talk-”

Grabbing the collar of his blazer, she used the leverage to wrap her legs around his neck, effectively bringing him down.

He hit his head hard and Natasha knew what it meant. Her first soulmate was dead. Her hands were shaking, she knelt down on the dirty floor, one hand automatically reaching for his throat. There, feeble but regular, she found a heartbeat.

Natalia frowned. How could he be still alive? She was meant to kill him. It was written on her skin since the day she was born. She was meant to end his life. Yet, he was still alive, even if passed out.

Maybe she could use this, she thought, pulling the flash-drive with her newly recovered intel about the weapon trafficking in it. Maybe she could send a message. But what if this man wasn't even S.H.I.E.L.D., what if he was involved in the trafficking himself?

Natasha looked at the sharp edge of his jaw, she remembered the sparkle in his blue eyes.

He was her soulmate. If there was someone she could take a leap for, it surely had to be him.

She scribbled a note on a napkin and left both it and the drive on the man's pocket, then ran away. Only when she was blocks from the bar, a thought occurred to her.

What if the words on her skin were black because the intel she entrusted him with was going to get him killed? What if she killed him not with her hands but with her trust?

It didn't matter. He was probably long gone already, there was no point in going back. She would just have to be more careful in the future.

  
  


Natalia was walking across a small park in Quebec when a golden retriever started jumping around her, barking and wiggling his tail.

She petted him on the head and scratched behind his ears, a small smile appearing on her lips at the joyful antics.

“ **I'm sorry ma'am, he tends to run away to show affection to strangers as soon as he can.** ”

Natalia's smile vanished as soon as the woman's voice reached her. Those words, spoken in French, were tattooed on the inside of her left arm.

She picked up a small stick from the ground and threw it as far as she could, watching as the dog started running in its direction. As soon as the dog was distracted, she turned around and tried to assess the owner: a tall, blonde woman, dressed in jogging clothes.

The woman's smile didn't falter, but Natalia could see a small wrinkle beside those blue eyes that made her realize the smile wasn't sincere, she was hyper-focused and tense, ready for a fight.

Natalia was the first to strike, but the woman deflected easily. She heard the dog bark in the distance and realized she didn't have much time.

“How did you even know,” the woman inquired, ducking to avoid a punch, but getting consequently kicked in the abdomen. “S.H.I.E.L.D. just wants to-” a second blow knocked the air out of her.

Natalia dropped an envelope at her feet, then sprinted for the bus stop half a mile away, getting lost in the crowd easily and getting to a bus that would take her on the other side of the city.

  
  


When she was in El Cairo it was a short brunette woman with blue eyes that said to her “ **Excuse me ma'am do you know when the next airplane for Berlin is?** ” and it almost ended up with her getting arrested, but she managed to flee and plant another envelope with intel on the woman.

  
  


She met a blond, blue eyed man in Beijing who approached her in the middle of a street market and told her “ **There's an interesting sale on cauliflowers today** ” Natalia knocked him out cold, leaving him out of guns and bullets in an abandoned alley, but with a flashdrive in his pocket that she thought S.H.I.E.L.D. would know how to use.

  
  


After the Rome incident – a short, apparently unthreatening man, asked her in Italian “ **Would you like to sign a petition for a law to prevent further climate change?** ” and they ended up in a forty-five minutes chase – Natasha knew she needed to investigate why she didn't know any of these highly trained operatives who seemed to turn up as soon as she gained any intel.

She knew she wasn't being subtle anymore, she knew she wasn't lying low when she entered a high security facility to steal plans or tech, but she was careful after stealing the intel she was hoarding. She tried to lay under the grid and avoided any operative she recognized. She had spotted – and avoided – Barton and his partner in almost every city she had been to.

But there were a bunch of agents she couldn't seem to recognize or spot, no matter the city or continent, despite the kind of intel she had, someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. that she had never seen before seemed to turn up so suddenly she was left with no other option but make contact.

They weren't recruits, couldn't be. They weren't from another intelligence agency either – Natasha had studied so many faces while in the Red Room she was confident there weren't many agents she didn't know that hadn't been recruited within the last year. The agents who keep tracking her? Those couldn't be, they were too skilled to be new to the game.

She was either missing an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. Department's personnel or something wasn't adding up.

Either way, she felt Fury's eyes on her back wherever she went, she knew they were closing in. Hopefully, she could keep ditching them while leaving them with intel to keep them too busy to look for her when she wasn't breaking into high profile facilities.

  
  


The first time she was interrupted while still on a mission, it was a Presidential fundraising hosted a few blocks from the White House.

She was wearing a blonde wig and heavy make up to conceal her identity. She needed to steal a phone from a U.S. Marine's Major General, she had reliable intel she would find her next target on that phone.

She had been waiting for her chance all evening, chatting with everyone who talked to her, trying to spot him somewhere. Eventually, she saw him at the bar, across the dance floor. She made a beeline for him, trying to be subtle, ordered a drink and spilled it on the counter, taking advantage of the commotion to apologize to him profusely and simultaneously stealing his phone.

She headed for the bathroom, planning her exit from a service door; she almost made it there, when someone gently grabbed her arm, spinning her around. She tensed up for a split second, almost falling into a fight stance, when she realized the man had circled her waist with his arm, taking her hand and pulling her forcibly into himself.

Natalia roughly tried to push the Colonel away, but he barely bulged.

“Come on, sweetheart, just a dance,” his voice was clearly inebriated, his movements were sloppy and Natalia was three seconds away from murdering him.

“ **Here you are, sweetheart, I lost you in the crowd** ,” a man appeared at her side, almost slipping between her and the Colonel, trying to get him away from Natalia without making a fuss. “Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like a dance with my girlfriend.”

The man seemed angered for a moment, but took a step back, allowing the man to turn to Natalia. His touch wasn't pushy or rough, he kept a respectable distance as one of his hands touched her waist and the other took her own hand.

“I assume you already know who I am. Or rather, whom I work for.”

Natalia didn't speak. She couldn't. Those black words on her skin were a curse; she didn't want any to appear on the man dancing with her. If she never spoke back, he would never know. Instead, she nodded her head yes.

He hummed. “I tried not to step in until we knew your target, but I couldn't let you murder him. As much as he would have deserved it.”

As they were dancing, Natalia's arm that wasn't in his, had traveled up his arm and grazed his shoulder. Something about him was familiar, to her, maybe even reassuring. She traced the hem of his blazer, pulling him slightly closer.

What was it? What was making her feel like she knew him?

Maybe she did, she realized. Maybe she had started to forget some of the faces she had to learn to recognize, maybe that was why she couldn't seem able to recognize some agents. Maybe the Red Room programming had finally taken its toll on her.

Whatever the case may be, he was her soulmate. The sixth one she met in three months, but her soulmate nevertheless. Maybe he liked dogs and walks and the quiet of the seashores in the evening. Maybe he was brave, caring, passionate and courageous. Gentle, if she had to judge by his touch. If he had really just let a mission go FUBAR just to drag her away from a man harassing her, maybe even kind, despite all the things he must have seen in that line of work.

And Natalia would kill him, somehow.

“All we're asking is for you to give us a few minutes to talk to you about a deal, if you don't want to take it you'll be free to walk.”

They both knew that was a lie, yet Natalia looked up at his sincere blue eyes and gave him a little smile.

She pushed up on her toes and kissed him. It was short and gentle, it felt right somehow, even if they didn't know each other at all. When she stepped back, she could see his slight frown as he looked at her with confusion in his eyes.

She smiled again, a little more sincerely, then took a step back her hand slipping away from the man's slowly. She turned around, quickly entering the lady's restroom before he could stop her and making her escape, hoping they would know how to use the phone she had slipped inside the man's pocket.

  
  


She kicked off of a ferry the guy who told her “ **These waters are mesmerizing, but not as beautiful as your eyes** ” and did not regret that choice in the least. It was the only soulmate she felt mildly comfortable getting rid of; she also left him without any intel.

  
  


Her favorite one was the woman who started dancing with her in the disco in Rio. The music was too loud, so they didn't speak, but pressed against each other and danced, until Natalia let her head fall back against the woman's shoulder and the woman kissed her neck, murmuring “ **Do you want to get out of here?** ” in Spanish and Natalia had to break her nose and flee.

It was the only time she ever considered staying with a soulmate for a little longer after finding out they were with S.H.I.E.L.D., but she knew she couldn't afford the risk.

  
  


It made no sense, how they were all agents. But Natalia knew what the black words on her skin meant, there was no room for doubt.

Either she was going to kill them all or one of them was going to kill her.

And as much as she wanted to get to know some, or at least one of them, she couldn't risk to pick the one who was going to be the death of her.

So, when the man in Costa Rica asked her “ **Are you from around here or are you passing by?** ” Natalia had no choice but to pick up her bag, knock the man out, then run.

  
  


When she met a woman in Chicago, everything changed.

The woman slipped on ice and almost fell on her, but Natalia helped her stay upright and smiled at her politely.

“ **Thank you, I think you just saved my life.** ”

Something inside her shifted when she heard the words. Something wasn't right with this woman, something wasn't as it was supposed to be, Natalia just knew.

She fled again, ran away as fast and as far as she could, and only when she was sure she wasn't being followed anymore, she stopped and allowed herself to think about why that woman had not seemed like a possible soulmate or even a possible agent, to her.

She wasn't particularly muscular, but neither were most of the other people she had fought in the past few months. She wasn't strangely tall or short, she didn't particularly stand out in a crowd, but neither did her other soulmates. She was an average Chicago woman, blonde hair, hazel eyes.

It hit her like a kick in the ribs.

The hazel eyes.

All her other soulmates, all the other people whose first words to her matched the ones on her skin, had bright sapphire eyes. The gender, hair color, height, weight, muscles mass, spoken language changed, but those eyes were always the same.

That sense of familiarity, of belonging, it was coming from those eyes.

Finally, she was beginning to understand what was happening to her.

  
  


Maria marched into Fury's office, fed up with that entire operation.

“Hill, you're back already, good. We have some news.”

“Sir, all due respect, this is getting ridiculous. I can't go on another mission, it has become apparent they are not only pointless and often resulting in a head injury on my person, but they're also confusing and a waste of assets and resources.”

“Well, I wouldn't say so. You retrieved that flash drive the first time you approached her, that helped us a lot.”

“Sir, this was attempt number ten and not only she hasn't spoken a single word to me, yet, but she always recognizes me as soon as I'm in sight.”

“Which is dazzling.”

“Coulson suggested it might have been the eyes, although I find it ridiculous. Lots of people have blue eyes, and whilst is the one feature I cannot shapeshift I find amusing the thought she is able to recognize me solely based on the shade of color of my irides.”

“Your theory was there was a mole. Did she recognize you even with the colored contacts?”

Maria stalled for a moment. “She seemed to, sir.”

“Seemed to?”

“I pretended to slip on the ice, she helped me get up. Only when I thanked her she looked at me with confusion, almost as if she recognized me but not quite. Then, she ran. I followed her, she knocked me out, the same as the other times.”

“I might have had to agree with you on the mole theory, if not for the recent events.”

“Recent events, sir?”

“Yes. The news I was talking about? Black Widow turned herself in to Barton when he and your backup team were just about to follow you back here. They were delayed, she found them and surrendered herself.”

“Surrendered herself? Just like that?”

“So it seems.”

“But...why?”

“We have no idea. But we're going to find out soon enough.”

  
  


Natalia Romanova wasn't a talkative person, Fury learned. At all. In fact, she hadn't answered a single question in the two hours they spent in the interrogation room. In his experience, he knew when a suspect wouldn't talk, it was because the right question hadn't been asked, yet. But with Black Widow, they had pretty much tried any question, every question, and still nothing.

“What is going to take you for you to start talking?”

Only then, slowly, Natalia's eyes rose up from the desk.

“The agent who brought me in. With the blue eyes.”

Fury stared at her, trying to gauge if she was serious, then turned on his heels and walked out of the room. When he went back, a couple of minutes later, Barton was next to him.

Natalia frowned, shaking her head.

“Not him. The shapeshifter.”

“How did you-”

“Send the agent with the blue eyes in.”

She looked down again, staring at the desk, not bothering to reply to any of the comments and hypothesis Barton and Fury started making right away.

When another agent came in, it was a woman. Dark hair, blue eyes. She looked at Natalia and Natalia stared back, waiting for her to speak.

Maria, on her end, was finally starting to crack. She had been chasing Black Widow for months, and Natalia had been a step ahead of her the whole time. So why turn herself in? And why then? It made no sense to her, it made no sense Natalia eluded her for so long only to surrender a moment later, it made no sense she knew Maria was a Shapeshifter; Fury and Barton were two of the three other people who knew in the entire world.

“ _How did you manage to do this?_ ”

Natalia kept staring at her, then she got up from the chair she had been sitting quietly on for hours.

Both Fury and Barton went stiff and Hill aimed her own gun at Natalia. The metallic noise of a pair of handcuffs colliding with the desk startled them, as Natasha freed her wrists without even seemingly trying.

What happened next, however, send them into a stunned silence.

Natalia began to slowly unzip her hoodie, then took off her shirt, as Barton casted his eyes down and Fury turned his head to the side, when Natalia remained standing in front of them in only a bra for several seconds, Maria recovered from surprise long enough to actually look at her.

“Fuck,” Maria whispered, taking two steps forward and re-holstering her gun.

“ _It's nice to finally see the original you_.”

Natalia's words startled her even more, as she recognized them from her own skin.

She started reading the black sentences scattered across the ivory skin of Black Widow and immediately recognized at least some of them.

She circled Natalia, walking around her and then returning to the other side of the table, as everything finally started to click. On the lower back of the Widow, there was a silver sentence, the question Maria asked before Natalia took her shirt off.

“I spent days, weeks, creating those identities. You burned through them in a matter of seconds, made them unusable, unnecessary. The files were destroyed along with all the fake info as soon as I came back from each mission,” Maria told her.

Natalia nodded. “I thought the intel I was giving them was what got them killed. I knew they were S.H.I.E.L.D. because only Barton and Red Room knew about my black marks. Since Red Room is gone,” she shrugged. “I thought you were exploiting my marks.”

“We never knew what they said exactly. Only you had many of those. We thought you already killed the majority of them while under Red Room programming,” Maria admitted candidly.

“I didn't.”

“I can see that, since they were all technically me.”

Fury and Barton stopped trying to avoid their eyes and went on observing the scene in front of them. There was no doubt what had happened and everything suddenly made sense to them, too.

“So, what happens now?” Natalia asked.

Maria sighed. “Now, we negotiate the terms of your surrender.”

“I have one last question before we do that. The last time I heard one of these-”

“Chicago? Before you turned yourself in to Barton.”

“So it was you. Your eyes were different.”

“I used contacts. We couldn't think of any other way you were recognizing me every time other than the fact I can't shapeshift my eyes. It was a ridiculous theory Barton had, it would be absurd if you could recognize anyone from their eyes alone.”

“It would, and I can't. Not anyone. Just you. I turned myself in because the woman with hazel eyes made me realize all the others had the same ones. And I thought... if there was even a small chance I was right, and you were a shapeshifter, and I could prove I didn't actually murder thirteen of my soulmates, I should take it.”

Maria kept looking at her, curiosity shining in her eyes. “What you've been doing – dismantling the Red Room, feeding us all that intel, fighting bad people – it's not gone unnoticed. You're trying to redeem yourself. What happened to you isn't your fault, and here, we'd like to offer you a second chance.”

Natasha didn't have to think about it before taking it.

  
  


Maria could successfully avoid her for three weeks and four days. Then, when Natasha actually decided to find her, there was nowhere far enough she could hide from a super spy.

“So that was a lie.”

“Pardon me?” Maria stopped writing the report she was working on and looked up at her. “I thought my office was locked.”

Natasha just smirked, sitting down in front of her. “You've said what happened to me wasn't my fault. You didn't believe it, did you? You've been avoiding me like I'm poison, Hill. I won't force you into anything just because you're scattered across my skin.”

Maria looked down, then up at her again, sighing.

“What happened to you wasn't your fault,” she said again. “It was mine.”

Natasha frowned, looking at her like she was insane.

“The Red Room, they recruited you because of your marks. Because they thought you could be ruthless.”

“And I was. I have been, for a long time.”

“Not like _that_ ,” Maria gestured to the few black words visible despite the fact that Natasha was wearing her uniform. “If I wasn't a shapeshifter, if you just had one silver mark, it wouldn't have been like this.”

“You think I was the only one? They recruited hundreds of girls. Some because they just could take them, some because they looked strong, some for their hair or eyes. Who knows why they did what they did. If it wasn't because of this, they would have found another excuse to take me. They wanted a Romanoff and failed to take my aunt. I was always going to be theirs.”

“You're not theirs. You were never theirs,” Maria asserted, almost harshly.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at her tone. “I guess not. I'm covered in marks saying I'm not.”

“You're not mine, either. You're just yours, and you're free to be who you want to be, where you want to be, with whom you want to be with.”

Natasha nodded, smirking a little. “That agent of yours still around? John, was it? Handsome guy, black hair, had a beard. Gorgeous eyes.”

Maria's eyebrows snapped up. “Was John your type?”

“You're my type. Whatever you want to look like, the way you fight and the way you dance and how you're looking at me right now are what draws me to you. Just never wear contacts again,” Natasha told her, getting up a moment later and strolling out of her office.

  
  


Natasha was almost sure she would die there. There was no way out, and not only she was five against one, she was disarmed and tied to a chair. The chair wasn't the problem, nor was the fact that she had no weapons. But her broken left arm and dislocated right shoulder meant she could only fight with the lower half of her body. And one? Sure, she could take one down. Two, three maybe. Five? Not quickly enough that one of them wouldn't shoot her.

“You don't really struck me as a man who would shoot an unarmed lady,” she smiled innocently to the boss.

“Mh,” he shrugged. “Maybe not, but Jimmy here is. Or, the new guy has to prove himself, I could let him do it.”

“Sir, all due respect, but I don't wanna shoot her, what if she was really just lost?” the guy, Jimmy apparently, asked.

“Lucas?”

“Oh, come on, can't we find some other use for her?”

The man scoffed. “New guy?”

“ **My name's Mark, and I'd much rather if we settled this another way.** ”

Natasha closed her eyes, raveling in those words. Mark – _Maria_ – had arrived after she'd been tied up, along with the one named Lucas. She didn't know Natasha was so badly injured, and she just needed a fast way to make her understand it.

“I think Jimmy gave me a concussion, but I think it was... cotton candy?”

“What the hell are you-” before he could finish his sentence, Maria had drawn her stun gun, shooting him and two of his men, fighting off the last one when he launched for her, knocking him out eventually.

“Jeez, Nat, maybe try subtlety next time?”

“My arm is broken, my shoulder dislocated. I've lost some blood. Can you lecture me when we're out of here?”

Maria helped her up and out and then, as promised, started lecturing her again.

  
  


They discovered, if Natasha saw Maria shift, the first sentence she would say to her wouldn't be on her body as a mark. As if, when she was aware it was still Maria, she didn't have to rediscover they were soulmates again and again.

They started hanging out together more, at first because of work, but their excuses ran out pretty quickly and they just resorted to ask when they wanted to be in each other's company.

Natasha started to wear tank tops and sleeveless dresses without makeup on her skin around the Helicarrier, the Triskelion or at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s events, she started to not care if her marks could be seen. She didn't even mind people staring, or whispering after her, because she wore the marks proudly now.

Maria eventually asked her out and Natasha said yes without thinking too much about it, just like she said yes to the deal Maria proposed to her on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D., without knowing exactly why. She wasn't surprised she was becoming fond of Maria, although there was a certain degree of perplexity in the fact that Hill seemed fond of her as well.

“Hey, can I ask you something weird?”

“The weirder the better,” Natasha smirked, trying to hide her nerves at hearing those words.

“Did you ever consider speaking to one of them? One of me, I mean.”

“I had their words on my skin. I've considered speaking to all of them.”

“Why didn't you? And why did you, when I was just me?”

Natasha had to smile at that. “Because you're my favorite version of you, obviously. The others were nice, and gorgeous – most of them. But when I saw you... I knew it would be you even before you spoke. And I was right, as I always am,” she covered the fact she was revealing her feelings up with sarcasm.

“Were you? So you wouldn't prefer I was different, or?”

“No, Maria. You are a smart, kind, funny, sarcastic, insufferable smartass and I wouldn't have you any other way. Plus, you're drop dead gorgeous. You're exactly who I'm meant to be with.”

Maria smiled at that, shaking her head. “Thanks, jackass,” she kissed Natasha's collarbone, right on one of the black sentences on her skin. “You're exactly who I'm meant to be with as well.”

 


	2. Nothing bad could happen here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First tumblr prompt I ever got: “We’re in an abandoned lodge in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you’re totally right, nothing bad could ever happen here.”

It was supposed to be an easy job. Supposed to, because things turned out a little differently from what they both expected. Maria wasn't one to throw the word 'trap' around a lot, but there was no other way to put it – it was a trap.

As soon as they saw the small cabin they headed for it, it was hidden from plain sight by trees but if those people chasing them knew the area, they would guess they eventually made it there. As they entered the one-room lodge, Maria proceeded to scan the room and secure all the exits as Natasha popped down on the couch. She moved some heavy furniture in front of the back door and the front door and the only window.

“It's alright, okay? We made it out just fine.”

“Are you kidding me, Natasha? We're stuck waiting for an extraction team in an abandoned cabin, in winter, and we're in Russia. Have you ever read an European history book? This is how some of the best armies of all time fell!”

“You're being dramatic. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Maria scoffed. “We’re in an abandoned lodge in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you’re totally right, nothing bad could ever happen here” she rolled her eyes and sighed. “At least neither of us was shot.”

“Actually” Natasha looked at her briefly from the couch.

Maria's eyes fell on the hand Natasha was using to press into her own side. She was immediately by her, moving her hand away to take a look at the wound.

“It's just a graze, no big deal.”

“Natasha. You have literally been shot. Can you please admit that things aren't looking great right now?” she sighed and grabbed the backpack she abandoned by the door, grabbing some bandages and disinfectant and attending to Natasha's wound.

“Look, this isn't the first time I'm in the middle of Russia, in the cold winter weather and chased by armed people who would kill me on sight. And sure, I might have a bullet wound too, this time, but it's still looking better than the last time.”

Maria finished her bandage work and then looked up at her.

“How come?”

Natasha just smirked at her. “Because this time, you're by my side.”

Maria smiled despite herself and shook her head. “Yeah, at least I'll keep you from freezing to death.”

An heavy knock on the door caught their attention and in less than a second Maria was up and her gun was stretched in front of her.

“Hill? Romanoff? The signal from your trackers led us here. The jet's waiting, hurry up.”

Maria had never been so happy in any of the – sadly very numerous – occasions Barton interrupted them while they were alone before.

“See? I told you nothing bad would happen” Natasha smirked as she helped her up.

“Says the woman who got shot” Maria pointed out.

“It's just a graze, Maria, I'll live. But don't think that just because the extraction team got here in record time, you can take back that smooth offer to warm me up.”

Maria shook her head and tried not to smile. “Wouldn't dream of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned this is going to be a collection of all the prompts I've written over time, thought I'd go chronologically and insert chapters with new stories as I write them.


	3. Cuddling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: "Cuddling"

Maria remembers how things were a couple years ago. She remembers when Natasha first came to S.H.I.E.L.D. and wouldn't let anyone in a three feet radius from herself, Clint being the only exception to this rule. Agents got knocked out just for hitting her shoulder with their own when she was lost in thought, for the first few months. Hill found it hilarious. Fury didn't find it as funny, to Natasha's dismay.

Things got better, with time. Natasha got used to the casual brushing of people walking past her and, whilst she remained aware of every single touching point of shoulder against shoulder, she refrained from knocking other agents down. Most of the time.

Maria remembers the first time Natasha touched her. She remembers the light weight of Natasha's hand in her own. It surprised her how easy it came to her, all things considered. She remembers how slowly things came to them, too. How at first Natasha would only let her touch her in private, only if they were being intimate. She would get far away, both physically and emotionally, almost as soon as their sordid encounters would be over. Maria told herself it was fine, it was efficient and if there is one thing Maria Hill is known for is efficiency. Truth be told? She hated it.

It was just a wall like any other, really. It was just a line to mark the ground so they could say “this is what friends with benefits do” and “this is what couples do” and never, ever, cross to the other side, because Odin-forbid they felt humans for more than five minutes at a time.

It all seems so distant. Like the faded memory of a dream you remember having but can't quite figure out when or how it ended.

As Maria sits on her couch, with a beer in one hand, Natasha's head on her shoulder and her arm around the redhead's shoulders, she's positively sure she doesn't want to close her eyes, just in case that distant dream comes back to hunt her. She looks down, turning her eyes away from the screen for a moment, and just takes in how peaceful and serene Natasha looks like that, snuggled up against her side, an arm around Maria's waist.

“Are the Daleks boring you?”

“No.” Maria's eyes snap back to the screen as she tries to hide the smirk on her lips. “You're just a lot prettier than a Dalek, that's all.”

It's Natasha's turn to look away from the scene playing on the TV, looking up at Maria with a playful smile on her lips. “You're a dork,” she says, but with the same breath she plants a kiss on Maria's lips.

“You're a nerd,” Maria retorts, kissing her back.

Natasha settles back against her shoulder and snuggles closer, turning back to the screen. Maria takes a sip of her beer and hugs her closer to her chest, smiling in contentment. She kisses Natasha's forehead softly and thinks back to that faded memories of a lifetime ago, when she would have probably been kicked if she tried something like that. Instead, Natasha smiles.

Natasha brushes her cheek, making Maria turn to her. She traces the outline of Maria's nose with her own, then kisses her again with a softness that shakes Maria to the very heart of her.

And if there's something better in the whole wide universe, something that compares to cuddling Natasha Romanoff on an average Saturday, Maria can't even begin to imagine it.

 


	4. Knocked on the wrong door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: "Knocked on the wrong door"

Maria has worked for fourty-four hours. It’s been fourty-six hours and thirty-three minutes since she got any proper sleep. There was a ten minutes nap on her office couch, but it barely counts if it doesn’t even get you to the REM phase. It’s not the longest shift she has ever had to push through. Probably won’t be the last time she’s been awake for two days without having time to even change her clothes. It’s still a torture.

She gets back to her apartment in full zombie mode and the only thing she can think about is how comfortable her own bed will be compared to the Helicarrier ones. And it’s so close, she’s so close, her keys are almost inside the door.

But there’s a sound and it’s coming from between her feet.

Her first thought is “ _No_.” and her second thought is “ _No, nope, no chance in hell,_ ” and she holds onto the faint hope that it might just be an hallucination due to her sleep deprived brain.

But as she bends down and picks up the small kitten meowing his heart out at her feet, the solid animal in her arms pushes away any remaining hope she might be imagining it.

The thing is, Maria knows that cat. It’s Mrs O’Neal’s new kitten, born two weeks prior and already escaped at least seven times. Apparently, this is Maria’s turn to have him at her door. His name is something lame like “Buttercup” or “Snowflake” and she’s heard all about the neighbor who brought him back all the time he’s escaped.

For a second, Maria debates with herself if she can leave him there and pretend she didn’t see him. Nobody would know. She could just go to sleep.

But then he meows again and looks up at her, almost frightened, and Maria knows that probably is her own sleep-deprived mind playing tricks on her, because that damn cat can _not_ read her mind.

“Meow.”

“Alright then. Up we go, snowflake.”

Maria scoops him up and starts walking to the elevator. And maybe it’s the damn cat meowing in such an annoyingly cute way, maybe it’s the fact that she’s been having a hell of a day (that was actually two days merged into an hell day), but she ends up on the fifth floor instead of the fourth and doesn’t even notice until she’s knocking on Mrs O’Neal’s door.

Maria sighs, squares her shoulders, plasters a smile on her face. She’s ready for all the questions she knows are coming her way about a boyfriend, her job, whatever. But when the door opens, it’s definitely not an eighty year old woman she’s staring at. Her smiles falter and she frowns a little.

“Fluffmaster!”

“Meow.”

Maria takes a step back, counts again. Third door on the right.

“He keeps running off and poor Mrs O’Neal is always looking for him.”

“So I’ve heard. There’s this perfect new neighbor who keeps bringing him back, apparently. Maybe he’s got a little crush,” Maria says and scratches his ears distractly.

“Meow.”

”I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh, I’m Maria,” she shuffles the kitten a little so she can shake the woman’s hand.

“Well, Maria, is nice to meet you. You’ve knocked on the wrong door, this is the fifth floor and Mrs O’Neal is on the fourth.”

“Oh. That explains it. I’m sorry.”

“No problem. I’m Natasha, by the way. The new perfect neighbor who keeps bringing Fluffmaster back.”

Fluffmaster, Maria remembers. Yes, that’s the cat’s name. Maybe this is all an hallucination, right? Maybe she can meet the new neighbor again without making a complete fool of herself, she ponders as she stares in those deep green eyes that have her entranced in a second flat.

“Meow.”

The sound shakes Maria off her daydream and she stops staring at Natasha.

“I’m so, so sorry. I’ve been awake for I don’t even know how long and I must’ve pressed the wrong floor number. Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem at all. Feel free to knock on the wrong door anytime.” Natasha smirks at her.

Maria walks backwards into the elevator, eyes still on the woman watching her from her own apartment door. As the elevator doors slide close Maria sighs in relief.

“Well, Fluffmaster, looks like I’ll be avoiding the gorgeous stranger who lives two floors away from me for the rest of my life.”

“Meow.”

“Yes, I know I made a complete fool of myself, you don’t need to point that out.”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, I can see why you have a crush on her.”

Maria scratches his ears and he purrs softly. She wants nothing more than to go lay down on her bed and forget the entire debacle ever happened.

Plus, she has to be ready for Monday. New recruits are coming in, and she’s heard from Coulson that Barton recruited Black Widow herself as one of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents. Maria looks forward to meet her. She’ll have to make a stern and professional first impression. You don’t get to slip up in front of someone like Black Widow and still mantain a high profile career, so she has to be rested, focused and precise. Yes, Maria thinks as she closes her eyes. Black Widow will be blown away by her impeccable work and handler abilities.

  
  


 


	5. Spousal privilege

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Blackhill + "Spousal Privilege"

The room was buzzing when she walked in and, although she wouldn’t have expected anything else, it was still quite unsettling. She remembered when Congress Hearing weren’t a witch hunt she was ordered to be a part of, and she would just walk in and walk out a few hours later, in need of a drink and a lobotomy. Now, she almost dreaded being there.

She spoke with Natasha the night before, they had already agreed on a strategy, both of them liked to be prepared for this kind of stuff. Problem was, Maria wasn’t entirely sure why she was there in the first place; Steve was AWOL, so was the rest of his team, but Maria didn’t have – not to the public knowledge at least – any relevant ties with any of them that would justify an hearing.

Yet, there she was.

Officially, this was an hearing to evaluate and rectify the Sokovia Accords. Unofficially, Maria suspected this was aimed at finding Captain America’s hide out.

She took her place on the stand when her name was called and saw Tony nodding and Pepper giving her a thumbs up. Happy was standing somewhere in the back of the room, journalists flooding the space. It was not everyday half the Avengers faced a Congress Investigative Hearing.

She was on the stand for an hour, answering questions about the fairness of the Sokovia Accords, of what had happened in the last few months to her knowledge, to pointless things that seemed designed only to wear her down.

Then, as one of the Congressman – Maria was almost sure his name was Yates – received a note, the one who was currently questioning her rested his questions, only for Yates to take over, with a much more aggressive strategy.

“Agent Hill, have you been secretly cooperating with the Avengers and/or S.H.I.E.L.D. ever since you officially left their ranks?”

“I have been cooperating with Tony Stark, since he is my boss, and yes, on occasion, I have helped his team when required.”

Congressman Yates paused at the expected answer just for a second.

“So you have been in contact with the Avengers, including members that are currently under violation of the Sokovia Accords?”

As soon as the second question was asked, she knew something was wrong. The line of questioning he was starting with was one he should have built up to, so what was he actually aiming for?

“Yes sir, I have been, in the past.”

“Have you been in contact with them since they were declared MIA?”

Maria did not lose her composure, but she did wonder why this was being asked and why it was being asked to her.

“I have not been in contact with Captain America since he fled, no sir.”

The expression on Yates face seemed to switch slightly. Maria had no doubt he was about to trap her into a perjury.

“We have a reliable source claiming you have been in contact with someone changing their location frequently in the past two months and there is proof of both your office and personal phone often being contacted by someone oversea.”

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t detect a question. And even if I did, I didn’t think I was under investigation. So why is my office and personal phone record being monitored?”

Not that Maria was worried. As if she would have made calls to a fugitive from anything that wasn’t a super secure personal line.

“Agent Hill, do I need to remind you that you’re under oath?”

“I am well aware, sir.”

“Then let me ask again,” Yates said, seemingly very sternly, but hardly able to keep the annoyed tone out of his voice. “Have you been in contact with one of the missing Avengers since they fled?”

“I have not been in contact with any of the Avengers opposed to the Sokovian Accords.”

“That was not the question, Agent Hill. Some of them signed the Accords and then turned. Some of them aren’t even in violation of the aforementioned Accords, yet they still took Captain America’s side over the World Council and decided to join him and flee. The question is clear: have you, or have you not, been in contact with one of the missing Avengers?”

Maria knew there was no dodging now.

“I have. Sir.”

“Good. Which one?”

“I refuse to answer-“

“Agent Hill, you are not under investigation as you so kindly pointed out. You can’t refuse to answer on the ground that it may incriminate you because there is no infraction on your part, unless you’re admitting to know where Captain America’s team is hiding.”

“I do not know where Captain America is hiding, as I already said I haven't been in contact with him since he fled.”

The previous night, Natasha made sure to point out she had separated from the rest of the team in case Maria was asked this very question. Natasha also failed to mention where she was hiding, but Maria was too good at her job to not figure it out on her own. The smallest background noise could make all the difference.

“Let’s try again. Which Avenger are you in contact with? I’m not asking for a location, this is not a question that might incriminate you, so I urge you to answer fully and truthfully.”

Maria kept giving him a steady look. If she had no choice but to do this, then she would do it with her head held high and without a crack in her voice.

“I refuse-“

“Agent Hill.”

“Sir, if you would kindly let me finish, I’d like to try to formulate this for a third time.”

Yates was irritated, but the rest of the room seemed edging on curiosity and confusion.

“Go ahead then.”

“I refuse to answer the question, on the ground of spousal privilege.”

Yates's laugh almost resembled a bark, it was a weird noise to hear in a Congress heating room. Then, after a moment, his expression shifted from amused to incredulous.

“Are you married to Captain America, Agent Hill?”

“No, sir. And I have not been in contact with him. As I have already said multiple times.”

Yates turned, hushing an order to the same guy who brought him the first note.

The room was loudly buzzing, flashes of cameras were multiplying. And Maria knew, it was just the beginning.

With the Congressman presiding asking for order in the courtroom, silence was restored just in time for the man to hand the Congressman a second paper.

“Agent Hill, are you married to Hawkeye?”

“Sir, if this hearing is going to become a fishing expedition into my personal life, I must respectfully ask the Court this be held in a private session.”

“Let me rephrase, then. Agent Hill, have you been in contact with Hawkeye since he went AWOL?”

Maria knew there was no avoiding that question.

“No, sir.”

When she saw him look down at the paper in his hand and read another line, her blood went cold. It was a list. There was no backing down now. Soon or later, he would get to the right name.

“Agent Hill, have you been in contact with the former KGB assassin known as The Winter Soldier?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you been in contact with Falcon since he went AWOL?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you been in contact with the Inhuman known as Scarlet Witch since she went AWOL?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you been in contact with Ant-Man...who the hell is Ant-Man?” He squinted at the page.

With each name, the buzzing in the room increased in volume.

“No, sir, I have not.”

Maria prayed more than anything that on the list were only enhanced people who refused to sign the Accords. But when in her life would she ever be that lucky.

“Agent Hill, have you been in contact with Black Widow since she went AWOL?” He read distractedly, still scanning the page.

When Maria’s answer failed to come, he looked up, pausing.

“Agent Hill, have you been in contact with Agent Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow ever since she fled the country?”

“I refuse to answer.”

“You must state for the record on what grounds, Agent Hill.”

“On the ground of spousal privilege.”

“Do you know where Agent Romanoff is?”

“I refuse to answer on the ground of spousal privilege.”

With gritted teeth the Congressman said “This'll be all. We'll require one of your wedding witnesses to come forward with a deposition as soon as possible. Dismissed.”

She knew press wouldn't be quite as easy to dismiss, but, at least for the time being, she was able to keep Natasha safe. And that was really all that mattered. As she was leaving the courthouse, followed by camera flashes and noisy reporters, her secure phone rang. She answered without hesitation.

“Before you say anything, just know that I would have avoided it if I could.”

“Steve got mad as hell we didn't invite him. Then, I explained he was still an ice cube at the time, so he asked we do a vow renewal so he can throw us a party.”

Maria stopped for a second, then shook her head and sighed. “He'll have to split the planning with Pepper and Tony, my other phone is ringing already.”

“Great, so we can reschedule after they make peace.”

“I gotta go, I'm being followed.”

“Press?”

“Fury. I'll talk to you soon.”

“Alright. We're gonna go pick up Wanda and send Vision back to New York. Maybe I'll escort him so I can come home for a couple of days.”

“That would be just perfect, I'll see you then. Stay safe.”

“Always.”

Maria smiled, then turned around to see Fury standing beside her in his black SUV.

“Get in,” he told her. “We got work to do.”

“Yes, sir,” she nodded and rounded the car.

As she closed the door her phone vibrated. It was a selfie, Natasha was smiling and an attached text was asking Maria if she liked the new hair color. _Blonde agrees with you, but I still like red better_ , she teased her. Things weren't perfect, but they would make it through this, too.

 


	6. FBI/CIA rivalry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: CIA/FBI rivalry

Maria likes the game. Problem is, she hates the banter.

And the banter starts long before and ends long after the actual game. In fact, the banter starts as soon as they get off the cars, because as soon as Carter sees May the first thing she says is “you guys are late, not that it surprises me, who wants to be on time for losing,” and May just gives her a glare in response. Coulson talks back and he and Sharon keep the banter going from the parking lot all the way to the changing rooms.

And Maria does not like it. She’s not a talker, she’s a doer. And, right about now, would be a good time to start hitting stuff with a bat.

Whoever had the idea to organize these FBI vs CIA softball matches really underestimated how competitive federal agents could be.

“We’re screwed,” is the first thing Coulson says once they’re out the lockers. “We’re so screwed.”

“What, they bought new gear with their funds?” May asks and tsks.

“Worse. Romanoff’s back.”

If Maria hears him, she shows no sign of it. She keeps walking and goes straight for the bench, starting to stretch while she waits for Fury‘s orders.

It comes to no surprise whatsoever when they see Romanoff in the pitcher’s position getting ready to throw.

All it takes is a glance, and it all comes back for Maria as if it’s not been five months since they last saw each other.

She’s only able to tear away her eyes because her phone goes off and she picks it up and turns around before Natasha can turn and catch her staring. She listens for a minute, nods, hums. Then she turns to Fury.

“Sir, there’s been a development in the Boyer case. They need me on site.”

“Can't you send someone else, you're our best player,” Coulson complains as Fury nods.

They were all almost certain she wouldn't stay as soon as the Romanoff name was dropped anyway. Maria shrugs off Coulson's comment and leaves.

  
  


They're calling it the Boyer case, but they have no proof that isn't circumstantial, not yet. The Boyer's have all of Virginia and half the State of New York in their poisonous hands. The extent of their illegal business isn't known exactly, but Maria got a pretty damn good idea in the last few months. When a body is found on a site they own, well, it just seems like a miracle at first. When five other bodies come up, it starts to feel like a curse.

Maria ends up with six bodies and nowhere to start, but she sure as hell is going to prove the Boyer's put them there. She connects two of them to the family and three to rival gangs. It's the sixth corpse that nags her, it's a guy from Roanoke County, studied law at NYU, never even got a parking ticket his whole life.

She gets to the Bureau as fast as she can and the update she skipped the monthly game for can be basically summed up in “they sure are dead”. All different guns, different times of death by months, different home addresses. Nothing ties them to the Boyer family except street rumors that can't be used in court.

That's not even the worst part of her day, because Coulson comes back while she's filling the last report and tells her they lost. Badly. And that's not even all. Carter told them some French killer-for-hire has spilled some beans about the Boyer's and it seems they might be working with some European guys to plant a bomb somewhere south, probably Virginia, maybe Maryland. Still, it's technically a foreign threat, that idiot technically confessed to the CIA, so now this is their case too. They're sending an agent as soon as possible, Fury tells her.

And when Maria sees Agent Natasha Romanoff walking out the elevator on her floor she knows it can't be a coincidence. She's not that lucky. She marches into May's office before they can see her and offers May twenty dollars to let her have Carter, but May just raises an eyebrow. She ups her offer to fifty, but Melinda just says she won't get involved in this and stands up just as Fury knocks on her door.

“May, you and Carter are on the foreign threat. Hill, you and Romanoff are on the murders.”

Maria likes the game. She just hates the players, sometime.

  
  


They nod at each other. They shake hands.

“Hill.”

“Romanoff.”

They spend twenty minutes in Maria's office in silence while Natasha works on the board, building a timeline for the murders, to see if they're connected. Maria knows they won't be, but it might still come in handy if the perpetrator is the same guy so they can confront the timeline with his alibi. It's still a long shot and very unlikely: different weapons, different burials, there's nothing to indicate a connection. They're all just dead gang members. All except one.

Maria has been staring at the pictures long enough to have noticed that there's a body buried in a different way, his hands on his chest, his eyes closed and a merciful killing wound on his head, no torture, no sign of struggle. She searches the name again on her computer and goes through the members of the Boyer family one by one to find a connection that isn't through the gang. When things click, she gets up suddenly.

“I'll go get coffee,” she states.

“Bring me a macchiato. I'll go to the restroom real quick.”

Maria exits in a hurry and clicks on the elevator button seven times while waiting, files in hand, headed to her car and not the coffee cart. She barely gets in and shuts the door, doesn't even get to start the engine, when the passenger's door opens and closes again.

“I took the stairs, let's go.”

“I-”

“You can lie to me again or you can start driving and sharing your hunch. Your call, but you looked in a hurry and I won't be easy to ditch.”

Maria sighs and starts the car.

“Five bodies were thrown in that pit, no respect, no attachment, just five low level gang members being disposed of. But there's one. A kid from Roanoke, moved here with his mother and sister when he enrolled in NYU. No record, never even got a speeding ticket,” Maria makes a turn, then tosses one of the files to Natasha. “Guess who went to NYU, started on the same year, also studied law?”

Natasha doesn't have to open the file. She knows a Boyer kid went there, she knows that family's story by heart. “Jason Boyer. He's twenty-nine now, same age as the victim. Word on the street is he's taking over some of the family business, money laundry mostly. You think he took out a rival?”

“Maybe. But then I saw...” she gestures to the file on Natasha's lap, still closed. “Take a look, go on.”

“Mark Meyers. Twenty-nine. Murdered six months ago, the rest of his story you just told me. What am I looking for?”

“That,” Maria points at his picture. “See that on his uniform? It's an NYU club brooch. I looked it up. It's their old LGBT club, Mark was a member.”

“A hate crime?”

“Thought so, but made no sense because of how the body was buried. So we're going to take a look at NYU '09 yearbook and see if anyone in the LGBT club pictures looks familiar.”

  
  


At first, they think Ron Boyer, Jason's dad, had his son's boyfriend killed because he doesn't approve of his lifestyle. That's not the case, as he speaks rather proudly of his gay son. He doesn't go as far as telling them “it's 2018, gay men can be gangsters too” but he damn sure implies it. So their angle changes.

They talk to Mark's mother next, knock on her door in the middle of the afternoon of what is slowly but surely becoming the worst day of Maria's career, one big hole in the water after the other in front of the one person she never wants to show weakness to again.

Mark's mother tells them what they expected, or something very close.

“He was a good kid,” and “then he met that Boyer boy,” are actual sentences in the story. “He changed. Closed off to his family, moved in with Jason. He would have followed Jason anywhere, they were in love. But then, things changed. Living together, Mark started to understand what Jason was mixed up into. He wanted out, but you can't live in Ron Boyer's house and just walk out of the front door when you're done. He was a good kid. He just didn't know what he was getting himself into.”

Maybe Natasha believes her, but Maria has a hard time doing so.

  
  


They go back to Fury empty-handed, but Maria tries her best to make it look like they're actually on the right track.

“One of the victims, the one we couldn't connect to the Boyer's, he got mixed up with Jason Boyer, the middle son.”

“Drug or money?”

“Worse. That idiot fell in love.”

“That might give us a pretty good motive. Keep digging.”

“Yes, sir.”

  
  


They ask around, find some friends of Mark who actually give them some good insights.

Soon enough they're presented with a plausible scenario and enough evidence for a trial, but not a sure verdict. So there's only one last thing they can try.

Interrogation.

Jason is young. He's not stupid, but he's not ruthless. He's a good kid who grimaces when he sees Mark's corpse. Maria genuinely thinks he might have even loved that guy.

“Did you know him?”

Jason scratches his beard, shakes his head.

“Really? His mother says you were together for a long time. Almost seven years, since the third year of college. She says he moved in with you four years ago, went missing six months ago. Ring any bells?” Maria presses.

“Not really.”

“Here's what I think,” Natasha speaks for the first time. “You two fell in love. You weren't sure, but he was pushy, needy, always on your case. You gave in, got serious, even moved in. But after a while, you just got bored. Couldn't take the neediness. Couldn't take him whining.”

“Stop. That's not us,” Jason says, closes his eyes not to look at Mark's corpse anymore. Natasha is getting to him.

“Come on, a handsome guy like you, with the job your father does. You could have had anyone. You wanted to have some fun and he was tying you down.”

“No, I loved him.”

“So you decided, it was time to cut him lose.”

“No. No, I love him. I would have given him the world if I could have.”

“Really? Then how did he end up in a pit with two bullets in his head, Jason?” Natasha forces another picture under his eyes.

“He didn't understand. There's no other way out from this life,” his voice trembled. “He just...he fell out of love. Resented me for a job he gave up in Washington to stay with me, resented me for my family's name, I could see day after day he was pulling away. I was gonna let him leave, I loved him.”

“But your father wouldn't,” Maria supplied.

“I never said that.”

Technically he didn't. And the proof they had was scarce, Jason had a solid alibi and his father would have fifty men ready to swear they were with him the day of the murder. They were going to get away with it. But then Natasha rounded the table and sat down next to him, putting another picture on the table, to cover the ones where Mark was dead. It was a picture of Jason and Mark smiling at each other.

“I don't think he stopped loving you. I think he just started hating your life. Your father's lies. That stuff eats away at you. But you can bring some justice to him, Jason. You can bring him peace, and make sure his murderer gets punished for what he did.”

  
  


“So, Romanoff comes back and in a week we put away the Boyer's Boss for manslaughter. Life in prison, if the jury comes through,” Coulson says.

“That's a big if.”

“Don't,” May tells her. “You guys did a trick we hadn't seen since Al Capone was put in jail for tax fraud. Just take a fucking win.”

Maria wants to counter, but thinks it's best not to. She likes the game. She just thinks the odds are rigged nine times out of ten.

  
  


She's putting the last few things left in her office inside one of the case's boxes when Natasha knocks on her open door. Maria nods and she steps in, closing the door.

“It's late.”

“Yeah, office is almost empty, I'm just packing the last few items.”

“I meant-”

“I know.” Maria takes down the last three pictures and then turns around. “I know what you meant.”

“I was hoping after five months you would be less mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

“I know. You're over it. It's late,” Natasha explains her former statement.

Maria shakes her head and looks down at the last picture as she puts it in the box. It's Mark and Jason smiling, when their lives weren't shattered yet.

“You made the right call, Natasha,” she says still looking at the picture, forcing that name out of her lips for the first time in months. “You would have hated that job. This is how you roll, six months here, a year gone, three months here, a season away, then back again for a week. If you had stayed in New York, you'd have resented me. We'd have fought, yelled at each other, and eventually fallen out of love. It would have gotten messy and-”

“And Fury would have to murder me and drop me in a park with five other bodies?”

“And we'd still have ended up here, with you leaving.”

Natasha leans on the wall, a small smile is playing on her lips. “I wish you gave me that speech yesterday. Cause another CIA job position opened up here in New York and I kinda jumped on it, signed the contract this morning. Wasn't gonna make the same mistake twice. I'm sorry you don't think we'd work, but I'll convince you we would. I got time, I'm sticking around.”

Maria is still processing what Natasha just said, when she pushes off the wall and opens the door.

“I'll see you at the next FBI vs CIA softball game. Be sure to clear your schedule next time, it's no fun beating your team when they're missing their best player.”

She nods, and watches as Natasha walks away. She waits two minutes, then grabs her keys and heads for the elevator, pushing the button until the doors open. She walks out of the building and it takes her all of five seconds to spot Natasha's car. She gets in without a word.

Natasha smiles. “Took you long enough.”

Maria knows what they say. Don't hate the player, hate the game. But in her case, she thinks she might like both the player and the game a little too much.

  
  


 


	7. Getting married on a boat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: getting married on a boat + request for a sequel

This is not how Maria has imagined her wedding to go. Well, that’s not really accurate. Maria never thought she would get married at all. But if she learned anything since she joined SHIELD, is that you can never predict the thing you might have to do to survive.

  
  


It all starts, like all the best stories, with a mission that goes spectacularly FUBAR.

“They’ll arrest us.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Hill.”

“They’ll throw us in a fricking cell and let us rot in there forever.”

“There is no proof, no physical evidence, nothing to tie us there.”

“Except the fact that we’re on the boat, escaping from that island. And it won’t matter, they’ll take us in and subpoena the both of us to make us testify against each other. We’re screwed.”

“They have to catch us first. And I won’t let that happen,” Natasha says with all the confidence in the word and a smirk that almost convinces Maria they’re gonna make it in time.

  
  


They don’t. Of course they don’t make it in time. They’re still in international waters on their three feet motor boat, but they can see at least five ships waiting for them to cross a boarder so they can be arrested. Europe isn’t fun anymore.

The good news is, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ship is close enough now, and their comms work again.

“Romanoff, Hill, do you copy?”

“Sir, were gonna need you to come in international waters and pick us up.”

“You did it, didn’t you? That was you.”

Maria was about to confirm Fury’s suspicions when Natasha ripped the radio off her hand.

“Sir, you don’t want Hill to answer that. What you wanna do is pick up two of your agents that are in international waters and just so happens to have remained without fuel before someone else does.”

A moment of silence. Then, “ETA two minutes. Be ready.”

“What does it matter, we’ll still be arrested as soon as we set foot out of international waters.”

“Maybe, but for now the only thing that can incriminate me is you, and the only thing that can incriminate you is me.”

“You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

“No. Think harder.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” Maria agrees reluctantly. “Just don’t tell Barton about this.”

  
  


Natasha and Maria get on the ship and Natasha marches to Fury as soon as they’re up.

“So, this is unfortunate,” Fury greets them with an unimpressed stare.

“Sir, me and Agent Hill fell madly in love during our mission.”

Fury’s eye almost bulges out of his skull at Natasha’s words.

“Excuse me? Agent Hill, is this true?”

Maria was tempted to scoff or scold both of them, but instead she looked at Natasha, who nudges her slightly.

“Yes, Sir. We shall be married at once.”

“Just so it happens our Captain is ordained in the US, aren’t you, sir?” Natasha presses, hoping Fury gets what they’re going for.

“Spousal privilege? This is the best you could come up with?”

Maria is about to retort when Coulson runs up to them and tells him the Spanish navy ship that followed them there is two minutes away.

“Okay, Romanoff’s plan it is,” Fury agrees.

  
  


The ceremony is quick. Coulson and May act as witnesses. Fury officiates. And Maria just nods along and says “I do” and then kisses Natasha on the lips after Fury tells her to.

And just like that, they’re married.

  
  


They get off the ship holding hands and as soon as they’re approached they say they were on a romantic getaway, nowhere near the island where all that mess went down. The officer questioning them recognizes Nick Fury, then sees the “Just Married” sign on the side of the ship that looks like it was somewhere collecting dust until some idiot came up with this plan.

“Well then,” he says, his Spanish accent clear in his words. “The building that blew up was a local gang base for money laundry and drug export, we wanted to thank the agents who blew it up, maybe gave them a medal. But you weren’t there, so,” he shrugs, almost smirks. “Congratulations. On the wedding.”

Maria squeezes Natasha’s hand a little too tight. She whispers something Natasha doesn’t quite catch, but she can imagine is something along the lines of “we’re never going with one of your plans, ever again” and then pulls her along through the docks, not letting go of her hand until they’re behind the Helicarrier's closed doors.

And as if that day hadn’t been enough, the first thing they see once on board is Barton, smiling like Christmas came early, holding a sign that reads “Congrats Mrs and Mrs Hill-Romanoff” and Maria walks to him and all but tears it out of his hands on her way to her quarters.

  
  


They never talk about it. If fact, they never even mention it again.

Until one day, out of the blue, Maria's phone rings and Barton tells her something. She doesn't catch all of it, but she gets the gist: they were on a mission, Natasha got injured to protect him, somehow an ambulance got there before he could move her. So she's in a civilian hospital, and bureaucracy will take time, so for now Natasha's alone in a hospital bed. Maria is out the door long before the story has ended.

She walks through the glass doors and up two flight of stairs, straight to the ICU desk, without even noticing Barton sitting in the waiting room until he's next to her.

“I'm sorry I called. They won't let me see her, won't tell me a damn thing, said I'm not a relative. She doesn't like hospitals. I don't want her to be alone.”

Maria doesn't say anything. She greets the nurse at the front desk and asks to see Natasha Romanoff. Red hair, brought in about half an hour before, with the idiot next to her. The question comes right after that.

“Are you a relative?”

Maria swallows the lump in her throat. “I'm her wife.”

“Really?” The nurse asks because Maria doesn't look like someone scared to lose her wife, not on the outside. But she knows people deal with grief their own way.

Maria fishes a wedding certificate out of her handbag and slides it towards her. The nurse glances down for a moment, then stares at Maria again, wondering what kind of person carries a wedding certificate to a hospital. Then she realizes, someone who's probably been denied to see her wife before.

“A yes would have been sufficient. Come with me.”

Maria turns to Clint, puts a hand on his arms, tells him “Stop worrying. I'm here now. Go home, rest, and I'll make sure she's not alone,” then she turns and follows the nurse past the ICU doors.

Natasha's room is quiet, except for the heart monitor. There's a chair and a bedside table, a closet on the opposite wall, a window. Maria knows hospitals, she knows people hate the colors, but she also knows why the walls are white or beige or mellow. Cause light yellow calms the patients, instead of wakening and exciting colors they paint the walls with soft colors to calm the people inside the beds, to calm the families waiting for news.

Maria doesn't care for it, but she knows Natasha hates it.

She sits down, finds a comfortable position, then waits. When Natasha wakes up, the monitor speeds up only slightly, for a moment, then her eyes open.

“Hill.”

It comes out mumbled but it's still enough to make Maria's heart pick up its pace.

“I didn't want you to be alone,” she feels the need to justify her presence.

Natasha nods, closes her eyes again. When they open once more, she looks around the room.

“The idiot is okay. He's resting, I told him I'd stay with you,” she says, and calls the nurse with the small red button above Natasha's bed.

“Why?”

“You remember the boat, right? You forced me to marry you, Romanoff. Now you're stuck with me.”

Maria takes her hand gently, she plays her presence off like a joke. But when Natasha squeezes back, whatever is that thing they have between them, it feels all but fake.

 

//

 

They don't talk about the boat, not often, at least.

Well, they _are_ married, so some things change. They don't date other people, not that either of them had dated much anyway with their line of work and everything.

Still, they don't talk about it, they don't introduce each other as wives, they don't introduce each other at all. It's just a thing that _is_.

They go on dates, occasionally, when they can fit them. It's nothing fancy, never something over the top. They try to be in the same country, _that_ day, every year, but don't really do much celebrating at all, usually don't even mention why they're moving Earth and Heaven to be in the same city at the same time.

The thing is, they're spies. Secrets are kinda their thing. It's a thing buried so deep most of the time it doesn't take effort. They're half sure Clint forgot all about it, too. Coulson and May probably assume they got an annulment long ago. And Fury has mentioned it exactly once, circa two years after he officiated it, to ask exactly why didn't they get the annulment.

“Me and Agent Hill fell madly in love,” Natasha answers dead serious.

And Fury laughs and shakes his head at the same answer she gave him at the time they asked him to officiate. “Fine. Don't tell me. I'm sure you have your reasons.”

Once he's gone, Natasha smirks at Maria and the Commander looks her up and down slowly, like she's deep in thought, and when she's done she hums to herself.

Natasha shivers and knows exactly what her answer is going to cost her. She's fine with the price, she knows there's a reward to go with that.

  
  


After that, nobody ever mentions it to them ever again.

That is, until the Avengers get to spend a day in Clint's house and they meet Laura and the kids and there's a moment when everyone's quiet and Tony chuckles and says:

“Next thing you'll tell us, Romanoff's married too.”

It's a joke, meant to lighten the mood, but when Clint's about to laugh dismissively, something crosses his mind and he frowns instead. _Is_ Natasha still married, what happened to that contract anyway?

“Wait- are you?” Steve asks.

“Did you guys ever get an annulment?” Clint wondered out loud, not thinking twice about the fact that it might be still relevant enough that he shouldn't talk about it. “You never had to testify against each other in the end, so it was pretty pointless.”

“You got married to avoid testifying?” Bruce seems baffled.

“Why would we?” Natasha says to Clint. “We told Fury that day, and we told him again when he asked the same thing you just did, we don't know what you're talking about. We fell madly in love,” she says and the images Scarlet Witch put in her seem tampered when she pictures Maria smiling at her the first time ever Natasha told her she really _did_ want to spend the rest of her life with her.

“You and _whom_ exactly?” Steve asks and by the way he's blushing Natasha figures he's thinking about that silly kiss.

That's when Fury knocks and strolls in with hid Deputy Director in tow – Maria insisted on being present when she learned what happened to Natasha.

The thing is, Laura opens the door just when Clint asks loudly:

“Wait, Natasha, are you seriously still married?!”

And when Fury and Hill appear in the living room doorway it's easy to read their expressions and to guess they heard perfectly what Clint just asked.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” Natasha frowns. “You're one of our best friends. We'd tell you if we ever got a divorce. Wouldn't we, Maria?”

For the first time in her career, when the eyes of all the superheroes in the room turn to her, she feels the need to flinch, take a step back, blush. She does none of the above, of course. She's Commander Hill, so she clears her voice, raises her chin, and nods.

“Of course, we would.”

They're all silent for a moment and Maria's fist are clenched behind her back. Natasha seems relaxed and her nightmares are already fading – she knows that Maria will tell her again the reassuring things she's already heard a thousand times and the thought alone brings her comfort and hope.

“Glad that's cleared, now about that super AI that's running around destroying the world-” Fury jumps in, scoffing at them for getting distracted by such mundane things.

Natasha smirks at the look Maria's giving her, like she's assessing her. Maria will make her pay for this. She looks forward to it this time, too.

 

 


	8. Holding hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: Touch prompts -> holding hands

The first time their hands touch is when Fury introduces her to his deputy, Agent Hill.

Natasha shakes her hand and nods once. She doesn’t stare, doesn’t notice how firm the shake is, how blue her eyes are, none of that sappy shit Barton wants to convince her of. She just shakes her hand and nods and walks away.

  
  


The second time, she saves Sharon Carter’s life and Maria is sitting next to her bed when Natasha checks on her in the med bay.

“How is she?”

“Bruised but okay.”

They don’t say much else and eventually Natasha goes for the door. Hill is on her feet before her hand reaches the doorknob.

“Romanoff?”

She turns and Hill takes a step and offers her hand.

“Thank you. For bringing her back, for saving her life.”

Natasha knows people hug around here. Barton hugged May when she saved Coulson, Carter hugged Barton when he saved May, but Natasha is not really a hug person, so Hill offers her hand like they’re discussing a car rental deal and Natasha takes it.

Hill holds her hand a second too long, she seems like she wants to say something, but at the last moment changes her mind and lets go.

Natasha nods and leaves and ignores the way her fingers tingle while she walks to her room.

  
  


Technically, the first time they hold hands properly is undercover.

They follow a perp into a bar and it's couples night. Natasha finds it antiquate, Maria finds it annoying, but they both plaster a smile on their faces. Maria tells the man at the entrance they're a couple and Natasha takes her hand to make it more believable.

It's awkward, their fingers don't intertwine, their palms are slightly sweating from the run to catch up on the man they're following. They don't do a great job at selling it, but they're two gorgeous women wanting to get into a bar, so they get into the bar.

They catch the guy. They never mention the awkward hand holding ever again.

  
  


The first time they genuinely hold hands, however, is on their first date. And, well, their first date is pretty much a disaster.

Natasha has seven different topics for small talk memorized and goes through four of them before discovering that Maria Hill hates small talk. Hill opens the door and moves her chair and pays for the dinner and Natasha hates it. She misunderstands Maria’s politeness for control and Maria thinks Natasha isn’t making small talk because she’s nervous but because she’s bored. It’s a disaster. Both of them know there is not going to be a second date.

But then, they’re walking and Maria starts telling her a story about the park they’re in and Natasha can’t even really remember what the story’s about, she just knows she wants to be the thing Maria talks about so passionately, she wants to put that spark in her eyes, she wants to listen to everything Maria has to say. Suddenly, she doesn’t want the night to end.

When she sees two guys walking towards them, her instincts kick in. She takes Maria’s hand, slowly slides her fingers through hers, and their palms align.

The two men change route as soon as they see them holding hands, but they barely notice, because Maria has suddenly stopped talking and is staring down at their hands. She notices the men and gets why Natasha did it, but doesn’t resume her talk.

“Damn. I did that so they wouldn’t interrupt your story, ‘cause I wanted to keep hearing you talk, but apparently I interrupted it myself.”

Maria raises an eyebrow. Holds her hand tighter. Then continues her story. Natasha smiles.

  
  


It’s Maria’s turn to end up in a hospital bed, nothing serious, but the doctor thinks she might have a mild concussion. Natasha volunteers to watch her for the night, despite Barton stating they can have a rookie do it she stands her ground, and Fury frowns, but nods.

Natasha is holding her hand when Maria wakes, and she tells her where she is, reminds her of what happened, says she’ll wake her up every couple of hours. Maria nods and looks like she wants to protest, but she also looks very tired, so Natasha pulls the hand she’s holding, clutching it in both of hers, then kisses the back gently.

It’s awkward, too intimate, and she feels like she has stepped over an unspoken line. But Maria hums softly and goes back to sleep.

Natasha keeps holding her hand thorough the night.

  
  


They hold hands in parks, offices, hospitals, under bar tables, on helicarriers, walking on beaches, and even that one castle in Provence.

What once was an awkward gesture becomes a part of them, as natural as breathing. So casual and well practiced they almost don't even notice anymore, they just do it spontaneously.

Until...

Well, until the world ends.

After the Battle of New York, the world isn't the same anymore. And Natasha isn't just Natasha anymore. She's, first and foremost, Black Widow: local legend, international hero.

And, along with many other things, that gesture becomes forbidden to them once more. They can't hold hands in public places, parks, bars, beaches or castles. They're not granted the public privacy of anonymity anymore.

And, just like that, they're back to politely shaking hands at public events, parties and hospital rooms. Holding hands becomes something only allowed in their own apartments, away from prying eyes.

  
  


Everybody has something to say to Natasha when the time comes. Everybody. Fury has something to say, Steve has something to say, Barton has a full blown list of reasons why it's a bad idea. Even Tony, the “I am Iron Man” guy, thinks Natasha will live to regret this.

Natasha, quite frankly, doesn't give a damn.

She puts all those arguments on a scale, and on the other plate she puts just one thing: Maria. The woman who stood by her. Who's always going to stand by her.

So what if there are two hundred articles tomorrow and twice as many the day after that, saying that Black Widow shouldn't be dating the former Deputy Director Hill? What if the public criticizes her for being... what? In love? In love with a woman? In love with a woman who's always doing what she can to save the world?

Pepper has given her the general idea: they'll say it's fake, or they'll say it's wrong, or they'll say... well, they'll come up with something to make a good thing look bad, but at the end of the day Natasha knows what they have remains a good thing.

And she's so tired of always hiding, she doesn't have the energy to do it anymore.

So, one day, it's a Tuesday, they walk to the Avengers Tower entrance holding hands. They spot the two reporters immediately and Natasha feels Maria's hold lessen, so she tighten hers.

“Don't you dare let go of my hand,” she says.

She knows Maria just wants her to be sure. There's no coming back from this. But Natasha has never been more sure about anything before. This is right.

She can feel it in the way Maria's thumb caresses the back of her own hand, in the way their palms align perfectly, in their forearms touching slightly every step they take.

“The world isn't worth saving, if I can't hold hands with the love of my life in public.”

So they keep walking, never letting go, fingers always laced together.

  
  


  
  


 


	9. Handyman AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: Handyman AU (Maria is a handyman- handywoman? - and Natasha keeps unnecessarily calling her for help) + request for a sequel to the handyman AU

Natasha has been undercover for thirteen days, and nothing at all has happened – which, really, isn't a big surprise, because what could happen in a suburban neighborhood where the main demographic are soccer moms and their businessmen husbands? But Natasha's orders are clear. Blend in. Stay put. Mingle.

Problem is, women around the neighborhood mainly talk about two things: their children and their recipes. And Natasha, or, well, Nadia, doesn't have kids. She does like to cook, but she has brought three perfectly cooked dishes to three different neighbors in as many days and none of them has even returned the plates this far. She doesn't know what it is about this place, or if maybe this is just how closed off to strangers people are in California, but if something is off, it's hidden under so many layers of polite small talk that it's almost undetectable. She knows more specific orders are about to come in, she just doesn't know _when_.

She's getting restless and the heat doesn't help. Born and raised in the glacial Russian weather, Natasha can barely stand summer in New York, so she's about ready to melt by the end of her second week in California. And that is, of course, when her AC breaks.

She knows she can't just call a local maintenance guy, S.H.I.E.L.D. has a protocol and Natasha might be new but she knows how much of a pain calling someone she doesn't fully trust is going to be; she'd have to check the house for possible bugs all over again, every corner of the two floor house, plus the basement. And she's really not looking forward to unnecessary work that she's already done once. So she calls the number Coulson gave to her, the safe number she is only to use for emergencies.

“Hello?”

“The AC is broken.”

There's a long silence on the other end. “Excuse me?” Coulson sounds puzzled, like Natasha's speaking in a code he's trying to crack.

“My AC. It isn't working. I need to send you someone to fix it.”

Coulson hangs up on her. Natasha is really starting to hate this mission.

  
  


It's nine in the morning and all the kids in the neighborhood have just left for school, when her doorbell rings. At first, she thinks it's one of the soccer moms, but then she looks outside from one of the windows and sees there's someone with a baseball cap, carrying a toolbox, wearing blue cargo pants.

“Hi, I'm Maria. I work for Phil, I'm his handyman- well, handy-woman. He said something about an air conditioner acting up?”

The woman offers Natasha a hand and a smile and Natasha matches both, inviting the woman inside and showing her the living room, pointing to the broken device.

“Thank you for coming so quickly, it's really too hot here,” Natasha says casually, but she catches the woman biting away a smirk and then taking off her baseball cap.

“Yep, I'll try to get it done as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you. I'll turn off everything in the kitchen and then come back, I really don't need a fire too.”

Natasha goes inside the kitchen, turns off the oven, then goes back to ask Maria if she would like something to drink. Problem is, Maria really didn't waste time. The house is hot and taking down a heavy device from the wall isn't sweat-free even in winter, but damn, Natasha's pretty sure biceps aren't meant to look that good. This woman is toned, so much that Natasha wonders what other things she fixes during her job. And how she exercises out of it.

Maria is taking apart the AC to see what's wrong with it and one of the screws falls to the floor. That's what snaps Natasha out of it.

She clears her throat. “Would you like something cold to drink?”

“I'm fine, thank you.”

But standing there staring at Maria's toned back muscles while she works isn't really going to do any good, so Natasha still goes back to the kitchen and picks up two glasses, fills them with ice and sparkling water, and brings one back to the coffee table in the living room, while sipping on the other one.

Maria does her job well and quickly, the AC is up and running before Natasha has even finished her drink, and when every piece is back on the wall where it belongs, Maria sips on the glass Natasha put out for her, too.

“Thank you, you were a life saver.”

“No problem,” the woman says and gives back her empty glass to her.

Natasha wonders if maybe she got the wrong vibe from this girl, because her smiles and flirtatious tone have fallen flat and that's something she's not quite used to.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Oh, don't worry about it. I'm on Phil's payroll, he'll take care of it.”

Natasha gives her another smile and walks her to the door, watching her walk away and get into her pick-up before closing it again. Well, that certainly was a nice way to spend a morning.

  
  


Four days go by. Four days of nothing. Four days of small talk while watering plant and fake smiles over fences. Natasha doesn't know how much more she can take, she hopes the intel comes in soon, because she feels like she could go insane in a place like this.

Then, one of the Anderson's kids crashes his drone on Natasha's porch, breaking her swing. Mrs Anderson goes to apologize immediately, offering to pay for it or even to send someone to fix it for her.

“Actually,” Natasha finds herself saying, “I know someone from around here who can fix it.”

Mrs Anderson apologizes again and Natasha says it's okay, she doesn't mind, then starts a conversation about her orchids and they end up talking about the proper seasoning for chicken for two hours. Natasha steps back into the house at sundown, feeling like she's finally making progress about fitting in.

She only takes a moment to savor the small victory before heading for her phone, dialing Coulson's number again.

“Yes?”

“A kid broke my porch swing.”

“What?”

“My front porch. It has a small swing. A kid broke it, the mother wanted to send someone to fix it, but I said I had it covered.”

“Mh,” for some reason Coulson is being skeptical about this, like he doesn't think it's really necessary. Natasha doesn't really care what he thinks.

“Send the same one again.” This time she's the one who hangs up on the other.

  
  


It's nine o'clock the next morning when Natasha hears a car stopping outside her house. She waits a minute, but doesn't hear a knock on the door, so she opens it and steps outside.

Maria is there, scratching the back of her neck, staring at the broken swing. She sighs and puts her toolbox down.

“Well, miss Rindell,” she addresses Natasha by her fake name, “I surely didn't expect a call so soon. Alright then, I'll take the measurements, then come back this afternoon with everything I need to fix this,” she says, and goes right to work.

Natasha nods and watches as Maria works silently, never taking her eyes away from the toned arms before her. Maria scribbles something on her pad, then picks up her toolbox and turns to Natasha, nods, then walks away.

Natasha frowns, but doesn't say anything. Instead, she does what is asked of her. Mingles, talks to some of the neighbors, creates a bond with Mrs Anderson. When Maria comes back Natasha is still chatting over the fence with her new friend.

“Oh, this must be the person you hired to fix the...uhm...the swing.”

Natasha understands the pause. Because Maria changed, to work outside, under the early afternoon sun, and now she's wearing shorts and a tank top.

“Hello,” Mrs Anderson waves a hand and Natasha recognize that smile and, on one hand, this is something major she can exploit to bond with her, but on the other...she wish it could be socially acceptable to call bids.

“Hi,” Maria greets, then approaches them. “I'm Maria. I'm miss Rindell's handy-woman. I'll get on the swing right away,” she smiles and goes to pick up her tools from the car.

“I understand why you didn't want me to call mine,” Mrs Anderson says and chuckle. “Why don't you enjoy the view, I'll make some iced tea and bring it over.”

“That'd be delightful, thank you Mrs Anderson.”

“Oh, please. Call me Susan.”

Natasha smiles, “I'm Nadia.”

Maria works on the swing for a while, never getting distracted for too long, only pausing to drink a glass of iced tea when offered. And Natasha is almost self-conscious about it but the shorts and tank top and greasy gloves are really doing it for her. Well, actually, maybe it's the woman in front of her who's doing it for her, because she's had handymen before, but she never quite enjoyed looking at them work this much.

“All done. It should be dry and usable by tomorrow.”

“Wonderful. Thank you so much for your help.”

Maria smiles and shakes her hand. Natasha is already thinking what else could use a fixing in that old big house.

  
  


“The kitchen sink is broken.”

“Come again?”

“A tube burst below the kitchen sink and now it's broken. Can you send your handy-woman again, please? I believe Maria was her name?”

“Ah.” Coulson says. “Wasn't she there yesterday?” He sounds confused and curious, but Natasha hangs up before he can ask anything else.

  
  


When Maria comes by the next morning, Natasha makes sure she's wearing her shortest pair of shorts and a shirt that's barely there.

“Mrs Rindell. What can I do for you today?” Maria asks, and doesn't even look at anything but her green eyes.

“My kitchen sink is broken.”

Maria fixes it too quickly. She asks her to stay for lunch as a thank you, since she won't accept payment, but Maria declines.

“Alright, then. Can I have your business card?”

“My...business card?”

“Yes. I might need your services again and I don't want to keep bothering our friend. You're from around here, aren't you? So if you give me your card I can just call you.”

“Mrs Rindell, I don't think you're-”

“I can pay, if that's...”

“No, it's not about that. It's just, I'm not-” she averts her eyes, tries to look for the right words, then looks at Natasha's hopeful eyes again. And Natasha knows she's won the second Maria makes eye contact, because she's great at playing the girl you can't say no to. “I don't have a card on me. Can I write down my number for you?”

Natasha gives her the most dashing smile she has. “You most certainly can.”

  
  


“Hello?”

“Yes, Maria? This is Nadia Rindell.”

There's a brief pause and then Natasha hears the phone shuffles a little.

“Mrs Rindell, what can I do for you?”

“How good are you with holes?”

“I'm...sorry?”

“There is a hole in my wall. I was wondering if you could fix that for me?”

There are a few seconds of silence and Natasha can hear Maria clear her voice, which makes a coy smirk appear on her lips.

“I can take care of that for you. How's tomorrow morning? Nine o'clock?”

“Perfect. I'll see you then.”

  
  


Natasha wears a sundress. Maria doesn't seem to notice how cute and how short her dress is, to Natasha's dismay.

“How did this happen, anyway?” Maria asks while working.

Natasha completely ignores her questions and offers her a glass of tea instead. Maria nods and goes back to working.

Fixing the hole takes four consecutive mornings. But eventually, it's done.

“My upstairs shower seems to be clogged,” Natasha casually mentions while walking Maria to her front door when she has to leave. “Maybe you could take a look at it tomorrow?”

“Miss Rindell,” Maria smiles at her, “I'm starting to think you're making these issues up just because you don't want to be in this house alone.”

“I don't have a problem with being alone.”

“Well, it can get boring after a while.”

“It can,” Natasha agrees. “But this isn't about that. This is about my shower being clogged.”

Maria chuckles lightly and nods. “See you tomorrow.”

Natasha waves at her from the front porch and shuts the door once the car turns the corner. She's ready to head upstairs when her phone rings.

“Phil?”

“The mission is over, Fury's orders. Pack up your stuff, an extraction team will be there as soon as possible.”

  
  


“What the hell happened?” is Natasha's first question once she's out of the Quinjet and inside the Triskelion. “Why was I pulled from a mission I never truly started, Coulson?”

“Fury's waiting for you,” is all he has to say.

Natasha huffs and puffs, but follows him to Fury's office.

“Agent Romanoff. Welcome to our Triskelion, this is our primary base, I believe you've never been here before.”

“Sir, why am I here?”

“Well, you made a compelling point about how resources were being...misused...to arrange your stay in L.A., with two of our top agents monitoring you just to see how you would do undercover. Of course, I should have expected you figuring out it wasn't a real job, but I didn't expect you to do it in less then three weeks.”

Natasha blinks, processes the information carefully. It was a decoy.

“Why was I there, sir?”

“We needed to be sure your reprogramming was successful before putting you in the field. You have shown no sign of erratic behavior, triggers or anything else that would worry us. You're officially a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent.”

Natasha wants to yell and say this was extremely dumb, but she also doesn't want to go back to being babysitter'ed, so she nods.

“Thank you, sir.”

Fury nods, too. “Dismissed.”

When Natasha opens the door Coulson and Barton are waiting on her with big smiles, but apologetic eyes. She eyes them wearily as they congratulate.

“So you and whom else?”

“What?”

“Fury said two agents. Mrs Anderson?”

Coulson frowns. “They terminated your probation because they thought you were onto them,” he whispers, then watched her closely. “I can't believe this, you had no idea. Why the hell did you keep asking for her, then?”

Natasha narrows her eyes at him, but just as she's about to retort with something snarky, a voice catches her attention.

“Agent Romanoff, welcome to the Triskelion.”

“Maria?”

“Commander Maria Hill,” she introduces herself, shaking Natasha's hands firmly, no trace of a smile in sight. “Glad to have you on board. But if you ever make me waste my time again just so you can make a point, there will be severe consequences.”

She leaves before Natasha can think of anything to say, so she just watches her walk away, not able to tear away her eyes. The smiling handy-woman was gone, like she never existed.

“Oh my God,” Barton laughs. “You kept calling because you had a _crush_ on her.”

Natasha hits his arm. Hard.

“You have a crush on Commander Hill?” Coulson gasps. “Oh, that's gonna be a mess.”

“I don't. Stop it. We're never discussing this again.”

She walks away quickly, making a mental note to threaten the both of them if they ever bring it up, but she's also making a list of all the ways she could try to see that smile again.

  
  


“Hello?”

“Yes, hello, the sink in my room is leaking, I was wondering if you could fix that for me.”

“...Agent Romanoff?”

“That would be me.”

“Agent, I'm not really a handy-woman, you do understand that, right?”

“That's okay,” Natasha says. “My sink isn't really broken so I don't really need a handy-woman. Knock three times when you get to my room.”

She hangs up and waits. And when she's almost convinced Maria isn't going to show up and she's just made a fool of herself, someone knocks at the door three times.

  
  


  
  


This, is a farce. Natasha knows it, the panel members know it, the whole world knows it. But alas, it has to be done. They're doing a press conference to show that the Avengers are all reunited and ready to fight side by side if the need arises. The few of them who were fugitives sign a quick apology letter read by Steve and Tony apologizes on behalf of the other side.

It's supposed to be a short thing.

Supposed being the key word, because it's, after all, one of the very few occasions the Avengers are on a panel ready to answer whichever question is thrown at them. The results are... not what they have been expecting.

“Captain America, were you and Mr Stark involved before the fight broke out?”

“Miss Maximoff, are you really as young as stated by Mr Stark in previous admissions?”

“Miss Hill, is it true that you were involved in the re-building of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

Then, some dumbass must realize they're all quite public figures except-

“Miss Romanoff, are you in fact an android?”

“Black Widow is it true that you don't feel any kind of human emotion?”

“Miss Romanoff-”

They realize who they really should be focusing on is Natasha. They'll never get another chance quite like this one.

“I have plenty of human emotions,” Natasha almost scoffs.

“Yeah, right,” Tony mutters, forgetting his mic is still on. “Uhm. I meant-”

“I do. I feel annoyance, for one,” she looks at Tony pointedly. “Anger. Vengeance.”

“Maybe try something at the other end of the spectrum?” Clint says into his mic, because he's at the other end of the table. “Like, for instance, try the story about your first mission. That's always a delight to remember.”

Natasha has barely the time to groan, when suddenly every single reporter is asking a question about it, and now it seems impossible to avoid.

“I nailed my first mission,” she says coldly. “Figured what was going on quickly and had it taken care of.”

More questions come up and Clint raises a challenging eyebrow.

“Okay, okay. My first mission with S.H.I.E.L.D., I was undercover in California, in what I think might have been the most boring part of the suburbs, honestly. And I was fresh out of Russia, and I was _not_ used to the weather. And of course, on my second week there the air conditioner broke, so I had to call my emergency contact and ask for help. They sent two Agents to keep an eye on me, in case my reprogramming didn't work properly, one I met already, Agent Coulson, and so he couldn't come himself. The other one, I hadn't met. So they sent the second one. But I-” she clears her voice, looks quickly at Clint, then at Maria.

“That would be me,” Maria speaks up with a nod and a barely-there smile meant to reassure her that she's doing okay.

“Oh, you're going to wish you hadn't admitted to that in a minute,” Clint almost laughs, but refrains himself. He clears his voice once he realizes he said that into his mic and has at least the decency to blush.

“Anyway, I call Coulson and he says he'll send someone. The next day, the person I think is a local handyman knocks on my door, now as I said the A.C. was broken and the house was burning up, so this woman walks in and goes to fix it, takes it down the wall, all toned arms and firm back. So, once she's done, well, maybe I flirted with her a little. She didn't flirt back, I was crushed,” Natasha looks like she's almost starting to enjoy this, now that she's remembering it step by step and not just as an embarrassing story Clint likes to re-tell to Laura when Natasha comes around.

“You did _not_ ,” Maria affirms surely.

“Did too. So, she fixed the A.C., and I thought that was it. Until, four days later or so, a kid breaks my porch swing. I call Coulson again, because I don't want strangers on the property, remember that I still thought this was a real mission and not just a trial to see if my reconditioning had worked properly. So I called him, told him the swing broke, and asked for the same woman he sent the first time.”

“I mean, who wouldn't,” Tony smirks. “What?” He shrugs when Hill looks at him harshly. “You do have a nice figure, and you did fix the A.C.,” he shrugs again.

“Right, so my handy-woman shows up, this time in shorts and a tank top, doesn't even notice me – or my neighbor Susan – flirt with her, doesn't glance twice at my very unnecessarily short dress. She comes, fixes the swing, and goes. I'm heartbroken.”

Maria can see the smile Natasha is trying to stop from forming and it infuriates her that Natasha is enjoying this story so much.

“So I do what any sane person would have done in my place, bored out of my mind as I was and as into her as I was, I break a tube under my kitchen sink. I call Coulson, I ask him to send Maria again, and when she comes I ask for a card. She says she doesn't have one, but I don't question that, because it's the suburbs so I figure she's probably on the phonebook and everyone knows her by name and why would she need one, so she writes down her number for me.”

“I wasn't supposed to do that, you know? Fury could have had my badge for giving my real number at an undercover asset,” Maria points out.

“Yeah, but I didn't know it then. So, of course, I called the very next day flirting like my life depended on it, asking her if she would come take care of my- uh,” she clears her voice, but Maria remembers now and it's too late to deflect. She tries anyway. “I punched this hole in my wall. Took her for or five days to fix it, my dresses kept getting shorter. Maria was either clueless or not interested, but I was dead set on finding out if she might be.”

“Neither, I was just your superior trying not to perv on you!”

“Well, I didn't know that, did I? So as she was finishing up with the wall I immediately mentioned the shower was clogged, so she'd have to keep coming back. Director Fury called the mission off, congratulated me for figuring out Hill was an Agent. Commander Hill congratulated me too. I had _no_ idea, I was just enjoying watching her fix all of my stuff. Got my trial mission cut short but it also got me on her wrong side. It took almost two years for her to warm up to me again, and by then one of us was always working a mission in another continent, until I ended up working undercover and the rest, well, I guess it's public knowledge.”

Natasha looked at Maria for a moment and could see in her eyes she genuinely had no idea Natasha was hitting on her at the time.

She smile and barely noticed how silent the room was until Tony cleared her voice.

“That's the story of my first mission. I excelled at it because I had a crush on a girl. Tell me that's not a human emotion and I'll resign right now.”

Most of the reporters laugh, obviously relating to that, but it's Maria Natasha can't quite take her eyes off of, she seems pensive and slightly confused.

It's after the conference has ended that Natasha goes in pursuit of answers. She follows Maria for a couple of blocks. Maria lets her for a while. Then, Natasha sees her take out her phone and dial someone before putting it to her ear. Her own phone starts ringing a moment later.

“Yeah?”

“Any particular reason you're following me?”

“Yeah. My shower's still clogged, you never came.”

“They do say finding a good plumber takes years.”

“And nobody's as good as you,” Natasha wonders how Maria has never noticed this is the way Natasha talks to her and nobody else.

“Well, we're almost at mine. How about we take a look at your shower tomorrow and for now you come up and have a drink with me.”

Natasha smirks. “I can find so many things for you to fix at my apartment, if it means you'll come around more often.”

“Well, Miss Romanoff, now that I'm not your superior anymore, you'll have to start finding ways to pay me back, if you want me to fix stuff.”

“That can be arranged,” Natasha says, finally catching up with Maria, falling into step with her, easy smiles on their lips.

 


	10. First Anniversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Tumblr: First Anniversary, Blackhill

Her pen clicks just when the clock signals the end of her shift. The report is signed, her phone isn't ringing and there have been no emergencies all day. She’s gonna make it in time, she truly believes it. She gets as far as shutting off her laptop and getting out of her chair, before there's a knock at her door.

Coulson peeks in and Maria immediately shakes her head.

“Nope.”

“There has been an emerg-“

“No. My shift is over. I'm heading out.”

“Maria, it's Fury. He was in an accident.”

Maria sighs and picks her phone up slowly. It’s just a few minutes past five, she can deal with this and still make it to dinner in time; after all, this is why she brought a change to work, in case she wouldn't have time to change at home.

 

Fury’s emergency turns out to be seven mercenaries and a flamethrower. Maria has never completed a mission so quickly since that one Greek guy thought it would be a good idea to try an attack on Black Widow while she was undercover and they had to stop him before he blew her cover.

Fury is out of there in record time and immediately back on his feet, ready to take command back so Maria can go home.

“Damn. You really did not feel like working overtime today,” Coulson says as they’re heading back, commenting on how quickly Maria planned and executed the mission.

“I have a pre-arranged engagement.”

He squeezes his eyes and shakes his head slightly.

“She has a date,” May whispers while passing by. “Romanoff has mentioned it once or twice,” she explains.

“Oh, a date,” Coulson says almost delightfully.

“Who has a date?” Fury asks once he’s with them on the Quinjet’s main room.

“Hill has a date, sir,” Coulson chimes and Maria hits him very subtly.

“Well, you might want to push that reservation an hour or two. Those mercenaries were send by some European crime boss, they don’t know whom but they mentioned where they made the deal, so we’re gonna go check that out.”

Maria opens her mouth to protest, to ask they drop her off near the Triskelion so she can just have the one night off she’s asked for in three months, but the look Fury’s giving her makes her change her mind.

It doesn't matter, because she can still make it in time.

 

The mercenaries end up being a recent hire by one of Hoffman's men, the most recent addition to international nuanced drugs market. They don't know why Fury, yet, they don't know if it was a setup from a rival, if he wanted to make a point, if the capture was just for leverage. But, to Maria's utter dismay, Fury seems hell-bent on finding out tonight.

So they gear up and head for the facility the mercenaries were interviewed in, and Maria's uniform – her favorite uniform, the one she was wearing the day she asked out Natasha for the first time – gets torn up. It couldn't be the one Barton once puked on, of course. It had to be her favorite one, cause this was one of those days.

The make it out the facility with one hour to spare and Maria is still positive she can change and make it.

“Hill! Gear up, we're going to have a chat with Hoffman himself.”

No, Maria wanted to draw the line at that. A rescue mission for the Director? Sure. Getting intel out of some local gang tugs? Definitely her thing. But playing bad cop in an interrogation was every man's game, May could play that as well as she could. And she had her night off, for God's sake. But she was, after all, Maria Hill. And the man requesting her presence was the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. himself. So, really, she had no choice.

“Yes, sir. I'll make a quick phone call and be right back.”

 

“Hey there.”

“Hi, still at work?”

“Yeah,” Maria said reluctantly. “You?”

“Barton's cover was blown. I have to do an extraction, but it's going to be quick. And I was already in my dress when Carter picked me up, so I can still make it.”

“I'll push it up by an hour, I'm stuck too.”

“Coulson?”

“Fury, actually. He was ambushed.”

There a moment of silence and Maria presses her fingers to her forehead, trying to make sense of everything that's happening around them.

“I'll see you there in two hours,” Natasha says.

“Not a minute after that, I promise.”

Maria can sense Natasha not believing her through the phone, but she lets it go and hangs up after a quick goodbye.

 

Things go FUBAR quite fast, so when she reaches the restaurant she is half an hour late and still in her field uniform – her favorite one, that now has half arm missing and a tear on the side of her left thigh. Where she's been stabbed.

She's limping towards the entrance when she sees a woman walking the opposite direction, aiming for the door as well. Her red dress has a ripped shoulder sting and an uneven bottom cut that Maria is pretty sure wasn't supposed to be uneven at all. Natasha is also not wearing shoes, but rather carrying her broken heels with her right hand.

They stop in front of each other.

“You look nice,” is all Maria can say.

Natasha frowns and looks at her for a moment, then down at her torn up dress, then back at Maria again, before glancing at the broken shoes in her hand, then at Maria one final time. And then, she laughs.

It's just a chuckle at first, but soon Maria joins in and they find themselves laughing in the middle of the sidewalk.

“We're a disaster at this,” Maria says, hugging her around the waist.

Natasha puts her arms around Maria's neck and smiles. “I wouldn't say so. We got here together and our outfits match.”

“Yeah, in the sense that they're both torn and ripped.”

Natasha kisses her softly and Maria cant find the energy to care about the fancy restaurant reservation she had to make three weeks ahead.

“Wanna go home and take a bath?”

“Yes, please,” Natasha nods.

“I'm sorry about dinner.”

“Don't be. It was still the best anniversary I've ever had.”

“Because it was ours?” Maria asks cornily.

“Yes,” Natasha says, lacing their fingers together. “Because it was ours.”

 

 


	11. First meeting at a school function

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: They have their first meeting at a school function (they're adults).

There are some days, her best days, when she thinks this was for the best. The days where the kids in her class are all laughing together and behave, where she can play with them while teaching them how to move on the stage, where she can feel part of those little munchkins futures. And today...is not one of those days.

Today, in fact, is terrible. Natasha rarely regrets giving up ballet as a career and ending up teaching in an elementary school, but this is one of those days.

Because today, is recital day. And two of the kids are crying, three of them are throwing a tantrum with the parents that are still trying to dress them and one of them hasn't shown up yet. And he's the only one who has all the moves memorized.

This, Natasha knows, this is the definition of an imminent disaster.

And yet, somehow, she manages to get all the kids on the stage, even the one who's late, perfectly on time for the beginning of the recital. Sure, it's not the best show the school has ever had, but it's her first semester at the school and those are first grade students, so this is truly the best she could have hoped for.

The actual show goes by in a blur, she barely remembers it, but there's a big applause at the end and the parents seem happy, so she calls it a success. The principal congratulates her on not losing her mind on her first recital, and a few parents shake her hand as a formality. But it's when the hall is almost empty and she can finally catch her breath that Leo comes running towards her, pulling behind him a woman who seems rather familiar with his antics.

“Hi miss Natasha!”

“Hello, Leo. Did you have fun?”

“Yes! It was awesome and my auntie taped it for mom and dad. They couldn't make it back in time but that's okay.”

Natasha looks up at the woman he's been pulling behind him and gives her a smile, outstretching her hand.

“Natasha.”

“Maria, a pleasure to meet you, my nephew adores your classes,” she glances down at her nephew, who's suddenly very interested in the noises coming from the back of the hall. “Steve and Sharon were held at the meeting they were attending in Vancouver,” Maria explains. “But I got the little bug on tape,” she triumphantly waves around her cellphone.

“Glad to hear that. Are you Sharon's sister or Steve's?”

“Oh, I'm not that kind of aunt,” she shakes her head. “Just a family friend. Hill, Rogers and associates, Steve's lawyers firm? I'm Hill.”

“Oh, you're the infamous mastermind, what an honor!”

Maria smiles and nods. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you,” she offers Natasha her hand again.

“Likewise.”

Natasha says goodbye to Leo as well and watches as the two of them walk out of the auditorium. She's a relatively good friend of Sharon, good enough that she got her this job at a private school, Natasha reasons. So there's a chance Sharon might be able to get her Maria's number as well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating this, I'll try to be more regular from now on!


	12. Press conference post IW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt on tumblr: the Avengers have a press conference post Infinity War and when someone says Natasha hasn't love anyone in the snap she talks about Maria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR**

Natasha isn't sure a press conference is the best idea, but they're short on PR – well, they're short on everything, since the world population has been cut in half.

But Stark calls for a press conference, so they all gather and go. There's a lot to talk about, a lot they can use to stall. Ross is dead, for one, and the new Ross, Talbot, has immediately called off the man-hunts for the only people who can help. The Avengers are together again, but it's a scarce consolation, since there's only few of them left.

Then there's the heart of the question. Who did this, why, how. Tony answers question after question, trying to explain what happened and why they couldn't stop it. A power beyond them, he says. Something greater than them, something that couldn't be defeated.

The questions keep coming, one after the other, it seems to go on forever. Until one of the reporters ask: “Is there someone you want to mention? People wanna know who we lost, who _you_ lost.”

It sits wrong with Natasha in a way she can't explain, it feels like that man is saying “You're the only heroes we have left, so talk to us about the ones we lost,” and it seems wrong, preposterous even. It's their losses. Loss is not meant to be shared, is meant to be carried in silence. That's the way she has always done it before. That's the way she wants to keep doing it.

They all take turns, say the names of their fallen comrades. Each and every one is coupled with a pang of guilt and sadness; Natasha knows she'll never see them again. She'll never teach Wanda how to hide a knife under a dress like she promised, never give Bucky a welcome-back hug, never get to see Sam smile again. The list goes on and on and on and she wonders, when you lose too much, are you left with something at all or do you lose yourself too?

Eventually, the room quiets down. Steve glances at her and it catches the eye of Bruce, whom eyes her too. Tony glances at her quickly and then turns back to the mic, asking if there are any more questions or if they can go.

The same reporter raises his hand and asks: “Miss Romanoff, you seem to be the only one who hasn't lost anyone.”

Natasha doesn't even move, like she hasn't heard him at all. Tony leans towards his mic again, asking if there's anyone else who has a question, but the reporter doesn't sit back down.

“How can you stand up there if you have no idea what it feels like, what the rest of the world is going through. You've never really been close to other people, have you? We've all read your file,” he says.

It's the first time Natasha feels an hint of regret at making those files public, but she pushes through it. Tony is already yelling at the reporter something about how in time of crisis they're suppose to unite, not try to divide and attack their own protectors, but Natasha raises an hand towards him and he immediately stops mid rant, turning to her.

Natasha leans in, clears her voice.

“I've lost someone, too. Not everything about me was in those files, that was my past, the things I did before S.H.I.E.L.D., the things I did for them on the record. My personal life after I was recruited isn't public. I've-” she cleared her voice again, a memory passing through her mind too vividly. “I've lost people, too.”

“Who?” The reporter's voice was quieter, but he still pressed her.

Natasha looked down, turning over the ring she usually kept on a necklace but that she had been fidgeting with for the last four days. Four days. She barely held on four days. How was she going to make it through a lifetime?

“My-” she cleared her voice again. “Maria Hill. She was reported being with Fury, her phone has been recovered but she-” she took a shallow breath “-she was gone. She was one of the first friends I made when I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., she has been in my life for a decade and I do not seem to recall a moment I've been happy without her, or before her. She was not only my wife, but my confidant, the one person I knew would stand by me unconditionally. So don't you dare, not for a second, say I haven't lost something, because I lost _everything_.”

Without waiting for a reply or another question, she got up from her chair and left the conference room without turning back, clutching the ring tighter and tighter until its shaped was molded into her skin.

 

 


End file.
